Rajeshwari DeshpandeRajeshwari Deshpande is Professor of Politics at Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune. She was the Indian Council for Cultural Relations visiting professor (Rajiv Gandhi Chair in Contemporary Indian Studies) at the University of Tehnology, Sydney, in 2014 and UK-India Education and Research Initiative visiting fellow at King's India Institute, London, in 2012. Her research interests are in areas such as intellectual traditions of Maharashtra, comparative state politics, politics of the urban poor, urban caste-class realities, women's politics and policies related to social welfare.

At present, she is the lead researcher in India for a European Commission-sponsored international research project, 'Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe's Future' (CHIEF 2018-2021; http: //chiefproject.eu/), in which a consortium of eight European universities along with Savitribai Phule Pune University from India are partners. She is also the principal researcher at the Centre for Public Policy and Democratic Governance established by Savitribai Phule Pune University under research grants from RUSA Maharashtra.

Rajeshwari has been a member of the Lokniti network of Indian political scientists that conducts the National Election Studies in India and has worked on the nature of women's vote and the connect between welfare and vote in Indian elections using the NES data. She is a member of the editorial management team of the Lokniti/SAGE journal Studies in Indian Politics, where she also coordinates a discussion forum on 'Teaching and Learning Political Science in India'.

Rajeshwari has recently published an intellectual biography of a late colonial Gandhian intellectual from Maharashtra--Acharya Javdekar--in Marathi and has edited in 2015 Politics of Welfare: Comparisons across Indian States (with Louise Tillin and K. K. Kailash).

She has also published more than 30 research papers and book chapters in English as well as Marathi during the past 10 years and regularly contributes to the op-ed pages of English and Marathi newspapers. Read More Read Less