Biography

Aparna Sundar works in the areas of political economy, comparative politics, and the politics of development, with a focus on South Asia. She has taught at Azim Premji University and the Institute for Social and Economic Change, both in Bangalore, India, and at Ryerson University, Toronto, and continues to be visiting faculty at Azim Premji University. She has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and earlier degrees from McGill, Cambridge, and Delhi Universities. Aparna’s research and writing has been on the challenges of immigrant and labour organizing in Toronto; countermovements against commodification in India’s fisheries; the subaltern politics of secularism; and entanglements of sovereignty and development in civil wars in South Asia. Her current research falls into two broad areas: 1) precariousness and livelihoods, which includes a project on global markets, technological change and labour transformation in the artisanal fisheries, and a collaborative project on the making of livelihoods in a popular neighbourhood in India’s premier IT city of Bangalore; and 2) democratic politics and contemporary struggles over the meanings of democracy, which includes two collaborative comparative projects, one on authoritarian populisms, and the other on neoliberalization, precarity and contentious politics in the BRICS countries.