Zoya Hasan

Zoya Hasan is a Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and former Dean of the School of Social Sciences.

She was a Member of the National Commission for Minorities from 2006 to 2009. She has been a Visiting Professor to the Universities of Zurich, Edinburgh, and Maison des Sciences de L’Homme, Paris, and held fellowships at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Rockefeller Centre, Bellagio, and Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin. She has worked on research projects for the Indian Council of Social Science Research, Ford Foundation, DFID, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and the Observer Research Foundation. She has been on the Executive Council of several universities and is also on the Editorial Board of various national and international journals.

Hasan has been Chairperson of the Centre for Political Studies, founding Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies and the Centre for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion of the School of Social Sciences in JNU.

Hasan has also done extensive policy work pertaining to higher education and minorities. She was Chairperson of the Eleventh Five Year Working Group on Empowering the Minorities which submitted its report to the Planning Commission in November 2006, Co-Chair of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) Committee on “Regulatory Mechanism for Textbooks in Government and Non-Government Schools” which submitted its report to the MHRD in 2005, Member of the High Level Committee of the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD) to “Develop a plan of action for implementation of Sachar Committee recommendations on Education”.

She is presently a Member of the National Integration Council and of the National Monitoring Committee for Minorities Education (NMCME) and a member of the Working Group on Higher Education, Twelfth Five Year Plan, Ministry of Human Resources and Development.

Hasan has published widely in the area of politics in India and in fields of state, democracy and development, state politics, and on issues of equity, social justice and minorities. Her recent books include Congress After Indira: Policy, Power, Political Change (1984-2009), Politics of Inclusion: Caste, Minority and Affirmative Action, Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India (co-authored), Quest for Power: Oppositional Movements and Post-Congress Politics; Parties and Party Politics in India (edited), Transforming India: Social Dynamics of Democracy (co-edited), India’s Living Constitution: Ideas, Practices and Controversies (co-edited), Parties and Party Politics in India (edited), Ninth Impression 2012 and Democracy and Muslim Societies: The Asian Experience (edited) 2007, Equalizing Access: Affirmative Action in Higher Education in India, United States and South Africa (co-edited) 2012. She is the Series Editor of Critical Issues in Indian Politics, Oxford University Press. She is co-editing the Social Development Report, 2012 brought out be the Council for Social Development, New Delhi.