Aniket Aga is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Ashoka University. He is interested in science and technology studies, democratic politics, and agrarian studies. His research examines the ongoing controversy over genetically modified (GM) food crops in India. He works on questions of environmental justice, food democracy, and sustainable agriculture, with a focus on Maharashtra.
He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Yale University. His doctoral thesis was awarded the 2016 Sardar Patel Best Dissertation Prize. This award, conferred by the University of California Los Angeles, goes to the best doctoral dissertation in the U.S.A. on any aspect of modern India across the fields of humanities, social sciences, fine arts and education. He also holds a B.Tech (Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering) from IIT Kharagpur, and an MS (Business Research) from the University of Southern California.
Before joining Ashoka University, he was an Assistant Professor, School for Environment and Sustainability, and Junior Fellow, Michigan Society of Fellows, at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. He has previously worked with McKinsey & Company India and Texas Instruments India.
He has published research in the Journal of Agrarian Change, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, while policy-oriented writings have appeared in The Hindu, Economic & Political Weekly, The Peoples’ Archive of Rural India, Article 14, and The Wire, among others. His article on pesticide marketing in Maharashtra was awarded the 2019-20 Krishna Bharadwaj-Eric Wolf Prize by the Journal of Peasant Studies.
He is especially keen to work with students from disadvantaged groups, including Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi students and students from rural backgrounds.
