Contributor : Profile

Devesh Kapur is the Starr Foundation Professor of South Asian Studies and Director of Asia Programs at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Prior to joining Johns Hopkins University, he was professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, holding the Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India. He has also held the positions of Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Frederick Danziger Associate Professor of Government at Harvard. Kapur received the Joseph R Levenson Teaching Prize, awarded to the best junior faculty at Harvard College and outstanding Teaching in Political Science by the American Political Science Association, in 2005.

Kapur’s research has focussed on five broad areas that examine the political and institutional determinants of economic development: international financial institutions, political and economic consequences of international and internal migration, the effects of market forces and urbanisation on the well-being of socially marginalised groups in India, governance and public institutions, and higher education. His book, Diaspora, Democracy and Development: The Impact of International Migration from India (Princeton University Press) earned him a 2012 Distinguished Book Award of  the International Studies Association, while The Other One Percent: Indians in American (with Sanjoy Chakravorty and Nirvikar Singh) was a Choice Outstanding Title of 2017. His other publications include The World Bank: Its First Half Century (with John Lewis and Richard Webb) and Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs (co-authored with D. Shyam Babu and Chandra Bhan Prasad). His latest edited works are Navigating the Labyrinth: Perspectives on India’s Higher Education (with Pratap Bhanu Mehta), Rethinking Public Institutions in India (with Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Milan Vaishnav), The Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India (with Milan Vaishnav), and Regulation in India: Design, Capacity, Performance (with Madhav Khosla).