Kumud Ranjan

Kumud Ranjan is a Critical Caste Studies (CCS) Fellow in the Committee on Southern Asian Studies (COSAS) and, concurrently, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the rank of Instructor in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago. His research situates modern South Asian political thought within a global intellectual history of constitutionalism, human rights, and democratic transformation.

His current book project, Rethinking Emancipation, examines the intellectual and political trajectories of B.R. Ambedkar, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Hannah Arendt, bringing them into conversation to illuminate cross-historical debates on democracy, emancipation, belonging, and humanism in global political and social theory.

Kumud’s work engages questions at the intersection of political theory, sociology, and history, with particular attention to how concepts of modernity, secularization, and justice travel across contexts. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, he was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at O.P. Jindal Global University, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex and holds a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University.