People
Kamini Gupta
Kamini is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at King’s Business School, King’s College London and holds a PhD from London Business School. Her research explores how organizations simultaneously pursue multiple and conflicting goals, focusing especially on the domain at the intersection of business and society.
Kamini’s research has been published in journals such as Strategic Management Journal and Academy of
Management Perspectives. Her research has also won multiple awards such as SMS Annual conference Best paper prize and AOM best paper award. She is also the winner of several prestigious grants, including the ESRC-UKRI-ICSSR grant on strengthening UK-India trade as part of which she is studying social network inequalities among trade relationships.
Kamini is also passionate about impact and she often works with organizations with the goal of using systematic research evidence to make them more effective, and impactful. She writes and speaks regularly in Indian and British press, conferences and practitioner events on issues related to business and society.
She also hosts the India Series, a series of events with policymakers, entrepreneurs and influential thinkers on topics of urgent relevance to India’s growth and place in the world.
Sunil Mitra Kumar
Dr Sunil Mitra Kumar is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the King’s India Institute. Before joining King’s, Sunil received his PhD in economics from the University of East Anglia, MA in economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and BA in Mathematics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.
Before embarking on his PhD, he worked for the Social Initiatives Group of ICICI Bank, an erstwhile major funder of non-profit activities in India. From 2011 to 2014, he jointly developed and taught a short course on
impact evaluation at the University of East Anglia’s School of International Development, and has taught a short version of this for the UK Department of Business Innovation and Skills.
Research
• Causal inference and microeconometrics, especially using observational data such as household surveys
• Conceptualising and measuring discrimination
• Economic development and household decisions, particularly in the context of India
Sunil is an empirical microeconomist and is interested in causal inference, both in terms of theoretical concepts as well as through statistical analysis. The majority of his research uses econometric analysis of survey data to understand household behaviour in emerging economies. As part of this, he also studies caste-based discrimination in the Indian context, and he’s interested in conceptual frameworks for discrimination more generally.
Prateek Raj
Dr Prateek is an Assistant Professor in Strategy at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB). He earned his B.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD) in 2010 and his Ph.D. from University College London (UCL) in 2018. During his PhD, he was a Research Associate at the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (2016-2018). Additionally, he was affiliated to the Kellogg School of Management and the Center for Economic History at Northwestern University as a Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (2015-2018).
Prior to his PhD, Prateek worked as an operations consultant for clients in metals and mining industry (2010-12). He has also taught operational research methods at the London School of Economics (2012-2015), and continues to be an Honorary Research Associate at the UCL School of Management.
Prateek Raj researches how free and inclusive societies evolve(d) in history, and the role media technologies play(ed) in it. His Ph.D. thesis “The Friends we Make” at University College London focused on the role printing press played in the decline of traditional merchant guilds and the rise of modern impersonal markets in sixteenth-century Europe, culminating into a bourgeois revolution in northwestern Europe. In India, Prateek has recently explored how lithography printing had a similar impact in triggering a renaissance and nationalist movement in India in the nineteenth century. Prateek has taught the evolving history of progress at IIM Bangalore both at the introductory and PhD levels, and hosts an online course on the topic at popular MOOC portal EdX.
He is also the Founder of Tribe ML – building tech and design for better content discovery and social networking in the digital era.
Param Shah
Dr Param Shah is the Director of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), UK.
In his previous role as the Head of FICCI – Gujarat State Council in India, he was on the Central Regional Committee of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), statutory body and a national-level council for technical education, under Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development.
He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Indian Career Education & Development Council, a non-profit organization set up with support from the Australia India Council, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Dr Shah carries with him 15+ years of professional work experience. He started his career as an Academic and has been associated various Universities in India as a Faculty in Finance and Corporate Laws. He has been an academic advisor to the ICFAI University. He has also been associated with the Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry as Deputy Secretary General.
He holds a PhD in the area of Management. He also holds a Master in Business Administration (MBA) specializing in International Marketing & Corporate Laws and a Masters in Commerce. He graduated in Law and Commerce. He also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Rights.
Humaira Chowdhury
Dr Humaira Chowdhury is a Research Associate at the King’s India Institute. Before joining King’s, Humaira received her MPhil in Modern South Asian History and PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. She also has a background in Sociology and Social Policy.
Between 2013-2016, Humaira worked on a number of interdisciplinary developmental projects in India exploring themes such as contraceptive use among Muslim women in Kolkata;
learning disabilities among young girls in West Bengal, Orrisa, and Jharkhand; and an ethnographic study of Muslim fishing communities in the Sundarbans archipelago.
Humaira’s research interests span artisan-labour histories, trade networks and diaspora, migration/immobility, and Muslim lives in South Asia. Her PhD research focused on Muslim tailors and Dawoodi Bohra (Shia) merchants who stayed on in post-partition Calcutta. They are shown to be resilient survivors rather than passive victims of ghettoisation and state control. Her thesis demonstrates how some Muslim tailors used their ‘immobility capital’, a combination of assets embedded in place, in order to stay on and even thrive in constrained contexts.
Humaira has published in journals such as South Asia and has written blogs for the South Asia Centre, The London School of Economics and Political Science. Her forthcoming book chapter entitled, ‘Staying On and “Immobility Capital”: Muslim Tailors in post-partition Calcutta, 1947-1967’, will be published in Ajaya K. Sahoo (ed.) Routledge Handbook of South Asian Migrations (2023).
Ketan Reddy
Dr Ketan Reddy is a Research Associate (Economics) at the King’s India Institute. He has obtained his PhD in Economics in 2021 from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Ketan’s research has received multiple best paper awards and he is also the recipient of Institute Research Award awarded by Indian Institute of Technology Madras in recognition of his research.
Ketan’s research largely circles around the issues
related to International Trade, with a special focus on firm-level perspectives. More specifically, his research examines questions related to firm performance, innovation, firm survival in global markets, agglomeration effects, and the rising role of new technology in the form of automation and Industry 4.0 on firm dynamics from a trade perspective.
Ketan has published in journals like Small Business Economics, World Economy, Information Economics & Policy, Australian Economic Papers, Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Economic & Political Weekly, and Studies in Microeconomics. He has collaborated with leading think tanks such as Asian Development Bank Institute, and Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia.
Mir Autif Mohammad
Autif is a Doctoral student at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) specialising on Strategy and Strategic Management. He has done a B.Tech in Electronics and Communication from University of Kashmir and Masters in Tourism and Travel Management from Central University of Kashmir.
Prior to his PhD, he worked as a member of Faculty at University of Kashmir (2022-2023). Before that he worked as Academic Associate in Strategy at IIM-Bangalore (2020-2022).
He has also interned at the Indian Red Cross Society and worked as a transmission engineer at Ericsson India Pvt Ltd. (2015-2016).
Autif co-founded two startups, one of which is called ‘Kashmir Trout’, an omni channel platform helping trout farmers of Kashmir to sell their produce.
Shayista Majeed
Shayista successfully submitted her PhD in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management from the University of Kashmir.
Her doctoral research was based on the rigorous analysis of the relationships and linkages between different Personality Traits, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, and Organizational Commitment of health care professionals working across the Jammu and Kashmir region of India. Her research interests include an exploration of various themes, such as Personality Traits, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, Organizational Commitment, Organizational Justice, e-HRM, and Green employee and consumer behaviours.
She has published her research in journals such as the International Journal of Innovation Science, among others. Additionally, she has presented her research findings at a number of national and international conferences. She has also worked as a Lecturer in Commerce in Jammu and Kashmir.
Aaqib Bashir
Aaqib is a Research Scholar in the Department of Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure Studies, University of Kashmir. He holds a Masters degree in Tourism and Travel Management (MTTM) from Central University of Kashmir, and Bachelors from the University of Kashmir.
His research focuses primarily on the transformative influence of sustainable tourism development on destination competitiveness, with a particular emphasis on understanding and incorporating stakeholder perspectives to enhance the tourism industry within the region of Jammu and Kashmir.
His main areas of research interest include destination competitiveness, sustainable tourism development, destination social responsibility, tourist value orientation, community engagement, folklore tourism, and destination management.
Romeesa Shaban
Romeesa Shaban is currently a Research Scholar in the Department of Tourism Hospitality and Leisure Studies (DTHLS), University of Kashmir. She has done her Masters in Travel and Tourism Management (MTTM) from Central University of Kashmir (CUK) and Bachelors in Science from University of Kashmir (UoK).
She is interested in exploring Behavioral Intentions of Tourists by analysing the Personality of the Tourist Destination. Her main areas of research interest include Destination Personality, Destination Image, Destination Marketing, Tourist Behaviour Intentions, Consumer Psychology, and Self-Congruity.
Sabzar Ahmad Peerzadah
Sabzar successfully submitted his doctoral thesis in the field of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management, University of Kashmir.
His doctoral research focused on Leadership and Innovation behavior within the context of Public Sector Research and Development (R&D) scientists employed under the auspices of India’s prominent scientific research agency, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Sabzar conducted a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the linkages between diverse leadership styles, perceptions of empowerment, and the innovative work behaviour exhibited by scientists.
Sabzar is interested in exploring creativity and innovation-related behaviors, with a particular focus on individual-level perspectives. He is also keen to develop an understanding of team dynamics and organizational outcomes through an analysis of linkages between innovation-related behaviors and leadership, empowerment, artificial intelligence, knowledge management, employee and customer engagement, and customer participation.
Sabzar’s research has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Learning and Education, the International Journal of Innovation Science, and the Journal of Human Values, among others. He has also presented his research findings at various national and international conferences.
Annum Makhdoomi
Annum is a Research Scholar in the Department of Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure Studies, University of Kashmir. She has a Masters degree in Tourism and Travel Management (MTTM) and Bachelors in Computer Applications from the University of Kashmir.
Annum’s areas of interest include Resident Perception in context of sustainable tourism development, with the primary focus on understanding how residents perceive and engage with the tourism industry in Jammu and Kashmir. She is particularly interested in themes such as perception and attitude, community engagement, cultural heritage, sustainability, and destination management.