Angarika is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Employment. She is also completing her PhD on employment growth in India’s manufacturing sector from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. In 2021, Angarika was a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellow at University of Massachusetts, Amherst for nine months.

Prior to joining the PhD program Angarika completed her Master’s in Economics from Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and a Bachelors in Economics from Calcutta University.

Angarika’s doctoral research focuses on understanding the different trends and patterns of employment growth in the Indian manufacturing sector, particularly with respect to changing firm size, labor market flexibility and informality. Her research interests include labor economics, political economy of development and structural transformation of the Indian economy.

Vijayamba completed her PhD from Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore and was awarded from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, in 2022. She worked on “The Role of Women in Livestock Economy” for her doctoral thesis. In her work, she focused on the inequalities in the ownership of livestock assets by gender, provided an estimate of women’s labour contribution to the livestock economy of India, and explored women’s decision- making in livestock raising.

Vijayamba has worked on secondary data sets such as Employment and Unemployment Surveys and Periodic Labour Force Surveys and has experience using primary survey methods, including time-use surveys, questionnaires, and focus group discussions. Her current research interests include various aspects of labour markets, focusing on gender identities.

Kunal Mangal is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University. His current research focuses on how the competitive examination system for government jobs interacts with the rest of the labour market — including how it affects the unemployment rate, and how it shapes labour market opportunities for women. Kunal received his PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University in 2021. His website is available at this link.

An alumnus of University of Delhi, MDI Gurgaon and University of Warwick, Gaurav worked as a banker for most of his professional life of 18 years prior to joining Azim Premji University in Feb21. Immediately before this, Gaurav was consulting with LabourNet- a private sector firm focused on skilling, employment and livelihoods for blue-collared workers in rural and urban India.

He has previously taught as a visiting faculty in Economics and has also published in The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Decision and The Asian Journal of Law and Economics. His recent research work has focused on India’s IT-BPM Industry, MGNREGA, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, India’s Asset Reconstruction Market and role of policy measures in exacerbating rather than limiting the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/08.

Issues concerning livelihoods/ employment and financial inclusion are at the heart of his research interests.

Rajendran is an Assistant Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. He holds a Ph.D in Statistics from Cornell University. Along with Sakina Dorajiwala and Rajesh Golani, he is a founding member of LibTech India. LibTech India is an informal group of researchers and activists that work on questions of transparency and accountability in MGNREGA and the Public Distribution System. The group is engaged with various national rights-based campaigns such as the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information and the Right to Food Campaign. They work closely with several civil society organisations in Jharkhand, Bihar, Rajasthan, Telangana, and Andhra.

Arjun is a Professor of Economics at the School of Arts and Sciences at Azim Premji University in Bangalore, India. He was previously Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is also closely involved with the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Arjun’s research straddles macroeconomics, especially issues of debt, balance sheets, the political economy of finance and central banking and macroeconomic policy choices, income distribution and inequality, in particular classical approaches to distribution, and group based inequalities, intellectual property and the economics of power, He has also been closely involved with the CORE economics project.

Paaritosh Nath is an Assistant Professor at the School of Policy and Governance, Azim Premji University. He has a PhD from the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. His research looked at the dynamics of work, technology and skills as they play out in the Automobile industry of the National Capital Region (NCR). Prior to joining Azim Premji University, he was working as a research fellow with the Karwan-e-Mohabbat. His areas of interest include trajectory of growth of industrial labour markets in India, impact of labour laws on employment and processes of skill acquisition and upgradation.

Surbhi Kesar is a Lecturer at the Department of Economics at SOAS University of London. She is also a visiting faculty at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. She received her PhD in Economics from South Asian University, New Delhi and has been a Fulbright Fellow at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research interests are broadly in the fields of political economy and economic development, particularly focusing on issues of informality and exclusion, processes of structural transformation and capitalist transition, issues of identity, and approaches towards decolonising the economics discipline. She is a Steering Group member for the Diversifying and Decolonising Economics initiative, and an editorial board member of the Review of Political Economy journal. She is a co-project lead for curating Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) education platform and a coordinator of the Young Scholars Initiative of the INET.

Rahul is Visting Faculty at Azim Premji University. His research focuses mostly on issues of poverty, inequality, labor, gender and political economy. He is interested in understanding women’s participation and experiences in labor markets in India. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen, Germany and a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University, New York.

Anand teaches economics at the School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University. His research includes theoretical and empirical studies of conflict, and of the effects of informal institutions and norms on economic processes, specifically labour markets. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Cambridge.

Shravan MK is a Research Associate at CSE. Prior to CSE, he worked with Hindustan Times in business analytics. Shravan did his graduation in economics from Hindu college, University of Delhi followed by a Master’s from JNU. With a strong interest in economics research, he interned with Society for Social & Economic Research, New Delhi for the project ‘Rural Housing in India’. Shravan also assisted the Project Monitoring Unit, Dept of Education of Delhi Government and interned in National Law University, Delhi for their project on ‘Startup India’. Shravan is interested in labour markets and the intersection of caste, class and gender in labour markets.

Aaqib Qayoom is a Research Associate at the Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University. His research interests broadly include Human Development, Intersectional Discrimination & Public Policy. He is equipped with capacities to analyse developmental strategies, public policies and their implications. Aaqib has completed his graduate studies from University of Delhi with a strong interdisciplinary formation and later received his Master’s degree in Economics from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Prior to CSE, he has worked as a research assistant on various projects such as ‘Identity and Elections in India’, ‘Street Vending in Urban India’ and ‘The Effect of Ambient Pollution on Altruistic Behaviour’ with researchers from prestigious universities like Harvard University`, Stanford University & University of Western Australia.

Shritha graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Azim Premji University in 2022 and has been working with the Centre for Sustainable Employment since. Her undergraduate thesis was a comparative study of the labour market outcomes of demonetization and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Akshit is a Research Associate at the Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University. He has a Master’s degree in Economics from Azim Premji University. He is interested in the issues of employment and identity.