SANDIPTO DASGUPTA

I am Assistant Professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research. During 2024-25, I was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, in Social Sciences and Historical Studies. 

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I am interested in the history of modern political and legal thought, especially the political theory of empire, decolonization, and postcolonial presents.

 

I am the author of Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony, (Cambridge University Press, 2024), which reconstructs the institutionalization of nascent postcolonial futures through a historical study of the Indian constitution making experience. The book received the 2025 Francine Frankel award by the American Political Science Association, the ICON-S Prize for outstanding book in the field of Public Law by the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S), and the Bernard S. Cohn First Book Prize by the Association for Asian Studies. ​​

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I am currently working on my second book on public ownership after decolonization. I explore the ubiquitous debates on and practices of public ownership/ nationalization in the decades following decolonization to theorize: A. decolonization along the axes of ownership and property; and B. public ownership as a political project. 

 

I received my PhD from Columbia University. Before the New School, I was postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and the British Academy.