SignalStack

Researchers worth following

Everyone the newsletter has recommended, with what it said about them and where. Alphabetical by surname; the blurb is from the most recent mention.

Generated by scripts/build_companions.py from archive/; edit the source, not this file.

Farzana Afridi

Afridi’s work covers gender, labour markets and human capital in India. Her research on women’s employment is especially useful because it connects household constraints with the structure of labour demand.

Arsalan Ahmed

Transnational Security & Climate.

NBR Profile

Why follow: Co-author of the South Asia climate-gender analysis, represents emerging researchers who understand traditional security studies must grapple with climate realities. Currently pursuing Security Policy Studies at George Washington University, his work demonstrates how transnational security challenges require gender-sensitive approaches.

Chihiro Aita

Indo-Pacific Climate Security.

NBR Profile LinkedIn

Why follow: At the National Bureau of Asian Research, she brings a fresh perspective to climate-gender intersections across the Indo-Pacific. Her work on the NBR climate-gender analysis demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of how regional geopolitics shapes climate vulnerability. The integration of security studies with development concerns highlights the importance of understanding power dynamics and institutional capacity in climate adaptation.

Arjun Appadurai

Appadurai’s 2006 essay “The Right to Research” remains worth reading almost twenty years later.

His argument is that research should be understood as a general capacity for disciplined inquiry rather than an activity belonging exclusively to professional researchers. The paper draws on work with PUKAR in Mumbai and connects research capacity to democratic citizenship.

The formulation is useful. It should also make professional researchers uncomfortable in productive ways.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14767720600750696

Accessible copy:

https://docs.ufpr.br/~clarissa/pdfs/Research_AppaduraiA.pdf

Navroz Dubash’s work on climate governance, energy policy and the Indian regulatory state is useful because it keeps climate politics attached to institutions.

His edited volume India in a Warming World remains a good entry point into the history of Indian climate policy and the relationship between climate action and development.

I would read Dubash particularly when discussions of India’s energy transition become a list of renewable-capacity targets. Transitions occur through electricity regulation, fiscal choices, state governments, distribution companies, coal regions, firms and political bargaining. Technology is one part of that story.

Centre for Policy Research profile and publications:

https://cprindia.org/people/navroz-k-dubash/

Richa Govil

Richa Govil is Vice Chancellor of Azim Premji University’s Bengaluru campus and works on agricultural livelihoods, women in agriculture, household nutrition, farmer producer organisations and social enterprises.

Her work with Annapurna Neti on Farmer Producer Companies is especially useful because the FPO debate is often dominated by programme counts. Their research asks harder questions about capitalisation, inclusion, viability and the institutional support producer collectives require.

Profile:

https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/people/richa-govil

Farmer Producer Companies report:

https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/publications/2020/report/farmer-producer-companies-past-present-and-future

Sabyasachi Kar

Based at the Institute of Economic Growth, Kar’s work on political economy, institutions and India’s growth transition remains worth reading, especially alongside accounts that treat the 1991 reforms as a single clean break.

Reetika Khera

IIT Delhi.

Faculty page, IIT Delhi

Khera’s work on welfare state delivery, the public distribution system, and the political economy of social protection in India is foundational for anyone working on who actually receives state support — and who does not. Her research has directly shaped policy debates on NREGA, the PDS, and Aadhaar. As the gig economy debate intensifies and Budget 2026-27 reveals the limits of recognition without redistribution, her body of work becomes more, not less, relevant.

Kanika Mahajan

Mahajan works on labour, gender, firms and agriculture. Her work on women’s labour-force participation and gendered employment patterns is worth following for anyone using PLFS or earlier NSS labour data.

Anjal Prakash

Anjal Prakash works on climate adaptation, water, urban resilience and gender in South Asia at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business.

A December 2024 PLOS Climate paper of his asks a question that adaptation programmes still handle poorly: have gendered dynamics been adequately incorporated into South Asian adaptation research and practice?

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000475

In January 2025 he was also selected as a lead author for the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities.

https://www.isb.edu/news/isb-in-the-news/isb-prof-to-be-lead-author-for-special-un-climate-report

Worth following if you work on climate resilience and find yourself suspicious of adaptation frameworks in which social differentiation appears in the final paragraph.

Nitya Rao

University of East Anglia.

Google Scholar UEA Research Portal

Lead author on the PLOS Climate paper featured above. Three decades of field research on gender, agriculture, and climate change across South Asia, with a consistent intersectional lens covering class, caste, and geography. Her work bridges grassroots fieldwork and policy-level intervention in a genuinely rare way. If you work in climate adaptation or food systems in the region, follow her closely.

Kunal Sen

Sen’s work on political economy, structural change and economic growth offers a long-run view of development that is useful when short-run policy debates become too noisy.

Kalpana Sharma

Kalpana Sharma has spent decades writing about cities, development, gender and environment.

Rediscovering Dharavi remains particularly useful because it treats Dharavi as an economy and social world rather than reducing it to a visual shorthand for urban poverty.

https://www.penguin.co.in/book/rediscovering-dharavi/

Shreya Shrikhande

An epidemiologist working on climate change and health, including research from India. Her work is useful for people interested in moving climate-health research from global projections towards local exposure and health-system questions.

Louise Tillin

Tillin’s research on federalism, welfare and Indian politics is useful for development researchers who sometimes treat political institutions as background context rather than part of the explanation.