• Land
• Welfare
• The state
• Agrarian change
• Development theories

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.