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Professor of Geography, The University of Melbourne

Professor Craig Jeffrey works on global youth and contemporary India, particularly in relation to education, unemployment, politics, and development. He has spent over 5 years conducting ethnographic research in north India since 1996, working especially in rural and small town Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Craig is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (2017) and Academy of humanities (2019) in Australia and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (2014) in the UK. He has published eight books on his work and over 50 journal articles. These include his co-authored book Degrees without Freedom? Education Masculinities and unemployment in North India (Stanford University Press 2008), Timepass: Youth, Class and the Politics of Waiting in India (Stanford University Press 2010), and India: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2017). Craig Jeffrey serves on several boards at the University of Melbourne and has worked closely with the Australian Government on aspects of higher educational change in association with his former role as Director of the Australia India Institute.

Craig is currently working on the topics of prefigurative politics and youth viabalities. For examples of Craig's recent work on youth and social transformation in rural India the following open access articles are helpful:

Reformist Agency: Young women, gender and change in India. (2022)
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.13699

Fragments for the Future: Selective Urbanism in Rural North India (2021)
Annals of the Association of American Geographers:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24694452.2021.1947770?src=

Experience

  • –present
    Professor of Development Geography, University of Oxford