Ashwini Deshpande is Professor and Head, Department of Economics, and Founding Director, Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) at Ashoka University, India. Her Ph.D. and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India. She has published extensively in leading scholarly journals. She is the author of “Grammar of Caste: economic discrimination in contemporary India”, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011 (Hardcover) and 2017 (Paperback); and “Affirmative Action in India”, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, Oxford India Short Introductions series, 2013. She has edited several volumes, the latest of which is “Handbook on Economics of Discrimination and Affirmative Action” (Springer Major Reference Works). She is a Fellow of the International Economic Association. She received the EXIM Bank award for outstanding dissertation (now called the IERA Award) in 1994, the 2007 VKRV Rao Award for Indian economists under 45 and SKOCH Award for Gender Economics in 2022.
