Zoya Hasan

Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Distinguished Professor, Council for Social Development, New Delhi. She is former Professor, Centre for Political Studies, and Dean of the School of Social Sciences, JNU. She was Chairperson of the Centre for Political Studies and founding Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies and Centre for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion, JNU.

Hasan holds a B.A. and M.A from Aligarh Muslim University and a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. She has taught at the Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi before joining JNU. 

She has held visiting appointments at National University of Singapore, University of Zurich, and fellowships at, among others, University of Sussex, Rockefeller Centre, Bellagio, Maison des Sciences Del’ Homme, Paris, and the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin. She was elected President of the Contemporary History Section of the Indian History Congress in 2019.

She is currently an Advisor, The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy (Chennai) and Centre for Multilevel Federalism (New Delhi). She is also a member of the Editorial Board of Secular Studies: The Journal (Brill), Journal of Human Development in India and Antyajaa: Indian Journal of Women and Social Change. 

Hasan has also done extensive policy work pertaining to higher education and minorities. She was a Member of the National Commission for Minorities, National Integration Council, National Book Trust, 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. She was Chairperson of the Eleventh Five Year Working Group on Empowering the Minorities, Co-Chair of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) Committee on Regulatory Mechanism for Textbooks in Government and Non-Government Schools, and 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. 

Zoya Hasan has published widely on Indian politics, democracy, state-society relations, politics of representation, public protests, and more broadly on issues of equality, social justice and minorities. Her most recent publications are When People Rise in Protest: Mobilising for Equal Citizenship in India (co-authored), Democracy and Trial: Majoritarianism and Dissentin India; Ideology and Organizationin Indian Politics: Polarisation and the Growing Crisis of the Congress Party 2009-2019, Agitation to Legislation: Negotiating Equity and Justice in India,Politics of Inclusion: Caste, Minority and Affirmative Action; Congress After Indira: Policy, Power Political Change 1984-2009. Her edited works include Equalising Access: Affirmative Action in Higher Education in India, United States and South Africa (coedited,); Parties and Party Politics in India, Democracy and Muslim Societies: The Asian Experience; Diversity of Muslim Women’s Lives in India, (coedited). 

She is a regular commentator on contemporary issues in the media.