Sanjay Ruparelia is Professor of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he holds the inaugural Jarislowsky Democracy Chair, and a Senior Fellow of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

He is the author of Divided We Govern: coalition politics in modern India (Hurst & Oxford University Press, 2015), a study of the rise and fall of the broader Indian left; editor of The Indian Ideology: three responses to Perry Anderson (Permanent Black, 2015), which highlights the persistence and inadequacy of standard Western tropes for understanding the trajectory of secularism, democracy and nationalism in the postcolonial world; and co-editor of Understanding India’s New Political Economy: a great transformation? (Routledge, 2011). He has also published a range of articles and essays in edited volumes (Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, Routledge), scholarly journals (Comparative Politics, Economic & Political Weekly, International Journal for Politics, Culture and Society, Pacific Affairs and South Asia) and periodical magazines (Dissent, Open Canada and Policy Options).

Sanjay is preparing two book monographs, provisionally titled, A New Path to Welfare: rights and constitutionalism in the global South, and Reordering Power: the contentious transformations of India and China. The first examines the successes and failures of lawyers, activists and judges in advancing rights claims, socioeconomic welfare and political accountability in India vis-à-vis analogous developments in China, South Africa and Brazil. The second examines the transformations of polity, economy and society under Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping and their respective global ambitions in the evolving world order.

Sanjay serves as a co-chair of Participedia, a research network that studies democratic innovations around the world; associate editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian Politics; contributing editor for Indian Politics and Policy; editorial board member of Pacific Affairs; and editorial associate for Constellations: an international journal of critical and democratic theory. He co-hosts On the Frontlines of Democracy, a monthly podcast and lecture series with TMU School of Journalism and the Toronto Public Library, respectively.

Sanjay was previously Associate Professor of Politics, and Faculty Advisor to the India China Institute, at the New School for Social Research, and Assistant Director of the South Asia Institute and Lecturer in International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, in New York, USA.

His research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Commonwealth Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies and Social Science and Humanities Research Council as well as Cambridge, Johns Hopkins, New School, Notre Dame, Princeton, Stellenbosch and Yale.

He has served as a consultant to the United Nations Development Programme (NYC), United Nations Research Institute on Social Development (Geneva) and the Asia Foundation (Kabul). He periodically comments for and contributes to print, radio and television media—including Al-Jazeera, BBC World Service, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canadian Television Network (CTV), Channel News Asia (Singapore), Foreign Policy, Hill Times (Canada), La Razón (Spain), Radio-Canada, The Conversation (Canada), The Globe and Mail (Canada), The Hindu (India), The Hindustan Times (India), The Indian Express (India), The New York Times, The Quint (India), The Toronto Star, The Walrus (Canada), The Washington Post, US World & News Report, Voice of America, and WNYU.

He earned a B.A. (First Class Honors) in Political Science from McGill University, and a M.Phil (Distinction) in Sociology and Politics of Development and Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Cambridge.