Dean Rebecca Bushnell has announced that Dr. Devesh Kapur, of the department of political science, has been named the Madan Lal Sobti Associate Professor for the Study of Contemporary India. Dr. Kapur is the Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI).

Dr. Kapur’s research focuses on human capital, national and international public institutions, and the ways in which local-global linkages affect developing countries. His scholarship has a particular focus on India, examining how India’s institutions and migration are affecting the country. He is completing a book, Democracy, Death and Diamonds: The Impact of Migration from India on India. Prior to arriving at Penn, Dr. Kapur was associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, and before that the Frederick Danziger Associate Professor of Government at Harvard. He received his Ph.D. from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton in 1994.

The Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India was established in 2003 through the generosity of numerous alumni, parents and friends of the University, including P.C. Chatterjee; Raman Kapur, PAR ’07; Sreedhar Menon; Sunil Mittal; Dalip Pathak, W ’78; Rajiv Sobti, Gr ’84; and Sanjiv Sobti, W ’85, G ’86. The chair is named in honor of the Sobtis’ father, Madan Lal, and supports in perpetuity a professorship held by the director of CASI.