Dr. Satendra Kumar

Dr. Satendra Kumar
Visiting Senior Fellow

Satendra Kumar is a social anthropologist and senior researcher at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland. He received his Ph.D. from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. He works across the fields of sociology and anthropology of caste system, class, agrarian political economy, and political anthropology. His research investigates how marginalised, and middle-caste groups understand and engage with politics and the state. For over a decade and a half, he has conducted ethnographic field research among the Jat and Gujjar caste communities in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab. His current research examines the reproduction of Jat dominance in Punjab and the exclusion of and discrimination against marginalised groups in higher education: a comparative study of India and The Philippines. 

He has been awarded the British Academy Fellowship at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, UK. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, Bielefeld University, Germany, University of California, Berkeley, Australia-India Institute, Melbourne, and Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS). He has taught at Delhi School of Economics, the University of Delhi, and Allahabad University, Prayagraj. He is currently Co-editor, Book Reviews Section at the Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS) in The Hague, Netherlands. His recent publications include Badalte Gaon, Badalta Dehat: Nayi Samajikta ka Uday, Oxford University Press (2018), and Popular Democracy and the Politics of Caste: Rise of the Other Backward Classes in India, Routledge (2023).