Dr Rahul Pillai has a PhD in anthropology from IIT Madras. In his doctoral research, titled “Seeking Sustainability: An Ethnographic Study of Two Farms in South India”, he drew an ethnographic account of sustainability as an everyday practice grafted onto projects of artisanal agriculture. He analysed how these projects, by speaking of sustainability, engaged with questions of value at a fundamental level and offered a politics of hope, one that speaks productively to intersecting crises in our contemporary world: agrarian, environmental, and what in academic discourse is called a crisis of political imagination. His broader interests include economic anthropology, postwork futurism, and critical theory.

Rahul holds a postgraduate degree in Literature from the University of Hyderabad and an undergraduate degree in English, Journalism, and Psychology from St. Joseph’s University, Bangalore. His publications include both academic and journalistic articles.

Among the latter, his piece, “The Two-Finger Test Doesn’t Work? No One Told The Medical Colleges”, earned him the Priyanka Dahale award for Young Journalists by Laadli Media. His professional experience includes work as an Instructional Designer at Deloitte USI and an Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at Kristu Jayanti College, Bangalore.