Nationality: India
Affiliation: SOAS
Student Status: University Faculty
Level of Education: Ph.D.
Field of Study: Economics
Joined: November 12, 2017
Surbhi Kesar
London, GB
Member: Gender and Economics, Latin America, Urban and Regional Economics, Core, South Asia, Economic Development
Working groups
Research Interests
- Economic Development
- Political Economy of Development
- Marxian Economics
- Applied Econometrics
- Political Economy
About
I am a Lecturer in Economics at SOAS University of London, and a visiting faculty at the School of Arts and Sciences at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. My research areas include informal economy, processes of structural transformation and capitalist transition in labour surplus less developed economies, issues of economic and social exclusion, identity, labour and work, and decolonised approaches to economics. I received my PhD in Economics from South Asian University, New Delhi and have been a Fulbright Fellow at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I am a coordinator for the Economic Development Working Group of the Young Scholars Initiative of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and am a Steering Group member for the Diversifying and Decolonising Economics initiative. I am also an editorial board member of the Review of Political Economy journal.
About my research
My teaching and research interests are in the fields of development economics, political economy, and applied econometrics. My specific research areas are informal economy; structural transformation and capitalist transition in labour surplus ‘less-developed’ economies; economic and social exclusion; labour, work, and employment; economics of identity; and decolonising the economics discipline. Specifcally, much of my research work has been focussed on analysing the trajectory of post-colonial economic development in India and the possibilities of transformation of its economic structure with growth. Additionally, I have also been involved in a series of research projects to assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Indian labour market. Some recent (co-authored) works on these themes have appeared in development and political economy journals, including European Journal of Development Research, Review of Radical Political Economics, and Candian Journal of Development Studies. I have also been working on the issue of decolonisng economics and on the issue of identity in economics. I also write for popular and print media outlets on these themes, including for INET, Miami Institute for Social Sciences Economics Forum, Open Democracy, IDEAS, India Spend, India Forum, Frontline, Caravan, among others.