• Political Sociology
• Political Economy
• Village studies
• Social stratification
• Panchayati Raj
• Caste politics

Anisha is an interdisciplinary social scientist, with primary research interests in political sociology and political economy. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh and an MPhil in Women’s Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Prior to that, she completed her master’s in Public Policy from the National University of Singapore, MA in Sociology from Mumbai University, and BA in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Anisha has been a recipient of the Commonwealth Scholarship, Li Ka Shing Foundation Scholarship, and Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Award and Scholarship. 

Anisha’s doctoral research seeks to substantiate the thriving political life of India’s rural local governments. Drawing on 12 months of village ethnography, the study offers a contextualised and relational analysis of the politics of a village (gram) panchayat in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra in western India. In focussing on the politics of caste, she finds that its forms and mechanisms demonstrate both the political inequalities among and within castes and the politicisation of these inequalities. In her MPhil, Anisha undertook an intersectional study of Dalit women’s struggles against caste/​sexual violence in the above-mentioned region, which led to her PhD.

In her previous avatar, Anisha worked with the social sector. She was part of the Right to Food movement in Jharkhand and the anti-caste movement and women’s groups in Mumbai city. She headed the National Streets for Performing Arts in Mumbai, which sought to take art to public spaces and secure the livelihoods of artists. She also worked with the Economic and Political Weekly and continues academic editing and popular translation in varying capacities. She brings the above interdisciplinary training and rich field insights into her work at the Azim Premji University, Bengaluru.