Nikhil Deb

Nikhil Deb (@nikhil_ndeb) is Assistant Professor of Sociology at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Sociology at Shahjalal University (Bangladesh) and Murray State University. He is Secretary-Treasurer of the Political Economy of the World-System section of the American Sociological Association, Research and Policy Chair of the Environmental Sociology section of the American Sociological Association, and Chair of the Global Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. 

His research broadly studies how political and economic activities typically favor some human groups at the expense of other currently living or future human groups and the environment. Specifically, he examines whether the change in the governance of the global South, i.e., the transition to market liberalization, has contributed to socioenvironmental problems in marginalized locales, with particular attention to India and Bangladesh, the country of his origin. His research in Bangladesh examines the politics of climate change, natural resources, and agrarian transformation vis a vis market liberalization. Specifically, he investigates how market-driven institutional adaptation activities in southern deltaic rural Bangladesh, an area exceptionally vulnerable to climate change, reproduce the vulnerability of many land-depended communities. He also conducted research in India showing how the neoliberal turn in Indian governance played a crucial role in the production of many lingering consequences, evident in the 1984 Bhopal catastrophe in Bhopal, India. 

He has published in several peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, such as Social Problems and Critical Sociology. He is currently co-editing a book titled Social Justice in the Global South that Edward Elgar is expected to release in 2023. His research on climate change politics in Bangladesh is part of a multi-year book project. Deb is also on LinkedIn.