Sudheesh RC
Areas of Interest & Expertise
- Land
- Welfare
- The state
- Agrarian change
- Development theories
Biography
Sudheesh’s work explores human interactions with the state, capital and the environment.
His current research explores the tension between demands for cultivable land and the responses of the state through a study of land distribution measures taken up in response to Adivasi land struggles in Kerala. The research examines how particular forms of citizen-state relations take shape when the welfare state is confronted with demands for land.
Sudheesh has a PhD in International Development from the University of Oxford, where he was a Clarendon scholar. He also has an MSc in Social Policy and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he received an LSE Master’s Award scholarship. He has completed an Integrated MA in Development Studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Sudheesh has worked as a research assistant with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in New Delhi, where he conducted research on decentralisation and supported knowledge exchange among local governance practitioners and state actors from 10 South and Southeast Asian countries. He was a teaching assistant on the Core Course and the History & Politics Foundation of the MPhil Development Studies programme at the University of Oxford.
Publications and Writings
Journal articles
- Sudheesh, R.C. (2016). Social Protection as a Human Right in South Asia. Indian Journal of Human Development 10(2): 236 – 252.
- Sudheesh, R.C. (2015). State, Social Policy and Subaltern Citizens in Adivasi India. Citizenship Studies 19(3/4): 436 – 449.
- Sudheesh, R.C. (2015). Subaltern Struggles and Global Mediation in Koodankulam and Kashmir. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 38(2): 187 – 199.
- Sudheesh, R.C. (2013). Decentralisation, Participation and Boundaries of Transformation: Forest Right Act, Wayanad, India. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance 12: 51 – 68.
Other writings
- Sudheesh, R.C. (2022, February 25). Aralam: Bhoomiyudeyum Kshemathinteyum Rashtreeyam (Malayalam: Aralam: The Politics of Land and Welfare). The Malabar Journal.
- Sudheesh, R.C. (2019). Persistence of Poverty in an Indigenous Community in Southern India: Bringing Agrarian Environment to the Centre of Poverty Analysis. Occasional Paper 1. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
- Sudheesh, R.C. (2018). Unpacking How Indigeneity Originates as a Political Narrative. Dialectical Anthropology 42:97 – 99 (Book Review)
- Sudheesh, R.C. (2018, April-May). Adivasi Keralavum Ghadanaparamaya Akramavum (Malayalam: Adivasi Kerala and Structural Violence). Keraleeyam.
- Sudheesh, R.C. (2018, February 19). 15 Years Since Muthanga, Promise of Land to Kerala’s Adivasis Remains Unfulfilled. The Wire.
- Sudheesh, R.C. (2017). Social Justice and Queerness. Agenda for International Development.