Dr Preeti Sampat holds a PhD in Socio-cultural Anthropology from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Before joining Krea University, she was a faculty member at Dr B R Ambedkar University, Delhi. Her work broadly examines the social relations around nature, state and capital in India. Her research interests include several overlapping thematic clusters: land, infrastructure and urbanisation; capital, value and economic growth; the metabolics of nature and labour; caste and rent; and state, sovereignty and social movements. She has contributed book chapters, research papers and reports, and media articles along these themes in national and international publications. As part of an Engaged Anthropology grant from the Wenner Gren Foundation, Dr. Sampat has curated the Living Histories of Land in Goa Mobile Museum.

Dr Sampat’s forthcoming co-edited volume, Unsettling Land (University Press of Colorado), examines land and its affordances relationally. The volume brings together anthropologists and geographers studying land relations in diverse historically mediated sociomaterial contexts across the globe. The volume contributes insights from relational ethnographic practice, for contemporary politics. Dr Sampat is currently finalising research articles and a monograph based on her long-term ethnographic and archival work on what she terms ‘growth infrastructures,’ the value relations of land rent, and their implications for land rights and economic growth in India.

Dr Sampat’s recent research fellowships and grants include an Urban Studies Foundation International Fellowship at the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester; a Wenner-Gren Foundation Workshop Grant; a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship at the Advanced Research Collaborative, The Graduate Center, CUNY; a Wenner-Gren Foundation Engaged Anthropology Grant; and a Public Policy Scholarship with The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Chennai.

Prior to her PhD, Dr Sampat lived and worked in rural Rajasthan as a member of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan for several years, working on issues such as the right to information, employment guarantee and food security.

Research

• Infrastructure, urbanization and land
• The disciplining of more than human nature in capitalist relations
• Caste, coloniality and the ontologies of difference
• State, sovereignty and authoritarianism
• Economic growth and value relations

Publications

Books:

• Forthcoming. Sampat, P. and A. León Araya (eds.). Unsettling Land: Relational Practice for Contemporary Politics. Denver: University Press of Colorado.
• 2003. Economic Globalization Today. Bangalore: Books for Change.

Book Chapters:

• 2023. `Dholera: The Emperor’s New City.’ In Kennedy, L. and A. Sood (eds.) India’s Greenfield Urban Future: The Politics of Land, Planning and Infrastructure. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan Private Limited.
• 2020. `Make in India: Hindu Nationalism, Global Capital and “Jobless Growth.”’ In Maskovsky, J. and S. Bjork-James (eds.) Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.
• 2019. `Land-grabs and Dispossession in India: The Laws of Value.’ In Cullet, P. and S. Koonan (eds.) Research Handbook on Environment, Law and Poverty. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• 2018 `India’s Land Impasse: Infrastructure, Resistance and Rent.’ In Lawson, V. and S. Elwood (eds.) Relational Poverty Politics: Forms, Struggles, and Possibilities. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
• 2017. `Infrastructures of Growth, Corridors of Power: The Making of the Special Economic Zones Act 2005.’ In Motiram, S. and R. Nagaraj (eds.). Political Economy of Contemporary India.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Research Papers:

• 2025. ‘The Rentier Economy of Growth Infrastructures: Value Appropriation without Adequate Accumulation in India.’ Antipode. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.70061
• 2016. with Simi Sunny. `Dholera and the Myth of Voluntary Land Pooling.’ Socio-Legal Review. 12 (2): 1-17.
• 2016. `Dholera: The Emperor’s New City.’ Economic and Political Weekly. 51(17): 59-67.
• 2016. `India’s Land Impasse.’ SEMINAR. 682: 48-52.
• 2015. `The Goan Impasse: Land Rights and Resistance to SEZs in Goa.’ Journal of Peasant Studies. 42(3): 765-90.
• 2013. `Limits to Absolute Power: Eminent Domain and the Right to Land in India.’ Economic and Political Weekly. 48(19): 40-52.

Research Reports:

• 2022. `Land and Mega Infrastructure Projects.’ In Chandrashekhar, C. P., J. Ghosh, S. Guttal, N. Sethi, J. Athialy, B. Rao and B. Kuruvilla (eds.) State of Finance in India Report 2021-22. Delhi: Yoda Press.
• 2020. `The Value of Land.’ In Premkumar, L. (ed.) Corporate Concentration in Agriculture and Food. Dossier published by Focus on the Global South and Alternative Law Forum Focus with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung-South Asia office.
• 2015. Dholera Smart City: Urban Infrastructure or Rentier Growth? Policy Report No. 13. Chennai: The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy.

Media Articles:

• 2022. `Protests Over Land Mount Against Ahmedabad-Dholera Expressway.’ The Wire. February 5.
• 2022. `This Land is Their Land.’ The Hindu. January 31.
• 2017. `Why Dholera’s Farmers are Resisting Giving Up Their Land for a Shining, Smart City.’ The Wire. December 18.
• 2015. `Revisiting the SEZ Story.’ The Hindu Business line Ink. April 11.
• 2015. `Growth for few, Loss for Many.’ The Hindu. March 28.
• 2015. `Kiske Aayenge Acche Din? [Good Days for Whom?]’ Rashtriya Sahara Hastkshep. February 28.

Teaching Modules

Currently Teaching:

• Introduction to Sociological and Anthropological Theory
• Caste and Indigeneity: Critical Perspectives from South Asia
• The Urban Process
• Engaging with the Environment

Previously Taught:

• Methods and Techniques of Social Research (PhD)
• Workshop on Academic Writing (PhD)
• Guided Reading (PhD)
• Sociology of Agriculture (MA, PhD)
• Capital, Value and Infrastructure (MA, PhD)
• Law and Society (MA, PhD)
• Economy, Polity, Society (MA)
• Economic Sociology (MA)
• Workshop on Expressions (MA)
• Organizational Exposure (MA)
• Nature and Society (BA)
• Law, Politics and Society (BA)
• Caste in Contemporary India (BA)
• Introduction to Sociology (BA)
• Introduction to Political Economy (BA)
• Introduction to Anthropology (BA)
• Women, Culture and Society (BA)