Profile
Manjari Mahajan is Associate Professor in the Graduate Programs in International Affairs, and Starr Professor and Co-Director of the India China Institute at The New School. She is a Moynihan Public Scholar for 2025-26 at City College, CUNY.
Her research and teaching are on the topics of global health, politics of science and technology, philanthrocapitalism, international development, digital governance, and history of ethics. Her work, which is fundamentally interdisciplinary, lies at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies, Public Policy, and Anthropology. Much of her empirical focus has been on India, South Africa, China and the United States, and on global organizations such as the Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization.
She has held fellowships at the Moynihan Center at CUNY, Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology at Halle, Germany, and the Social Science Research Council in the United States. Her papers have received prizes from the Society for Social Studies for Science and the American Anthropological Association. Her work has appeared in a range of academic journals and also been featured in blogs and popular media such as The Nation and The New York Times. She has co-edited Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking, published by Amsterdam University Press (2025), and was founder/co-editor of the blog, Pandemic Discourses.
Degrees Held
PhD, Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University
MSc, Science and Technology Policy, SPRU Sussex University
BA, Harvard University
Recent Publications
“Data Worlds: The Gates Foundation and the Making of Global Health,” Economy and Society (accepted, forthcoming in 2026).
Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking, co-editor (with Mark Frazier), Amsterdam University Press, June 2025.
“Introduction” in Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking, co-editor (with Mark Frazier), Amsterdam University Press, June 2025.
“New Multilateralism for Promoting Equity and Global South Agency: Principles, Politics and Strategies for Remaking the Global Health Architecture,” Global Policy Opinion, co-authored with Sakiko Fukuda Parr, et al. 7 July, 2025.
“Learning from Asia,” The Political Determinants of Health Collective Opinion, University of Oslo, April 25, 2023.
“Conversations on the Frontline: The Politics of Negotiating Pandemic Preparedness,” Pandemic Discourses, December 2022.
“Casualties of Preparedness: Rethinking the Global Health Security Paradigm,” International Pandemic Lawmaking blog, Harvard Law School, November 2021.
Digital Technology and the Political Determinants of Health Inequities, Special Issue, co-edited with Katerini Storeng, Sakiko Fukuda Parr and Sridhar Venkatapuram, Global Policy Journal 12(6), July 2021.
“Digital Technology and the Political Determinants of Health Inequities: Special Issue Introduction,” co-authored with Katerini Storeng, Sakiko Fukuda Parr and Sridhar Venkatapuram, Global Policy Journal 12(6), July 2021.
“The Too-Narrow Policy Debate: Lessons From Agricultural Biotechnology for Digital Technology,” Global Policy Journal 12(6), July 2021.
“The Casualties of Preparedness: A Case of the Global Health Security Index,” The International Journal of Law in Context, Cambridge University Press, Spring 2021.
“COVID-19’s Lessons for India,” Conversation with Dr. Srinath Reddy on Pandemic Discourses, June 2021.
“Conversations on the Frontline: Uphill Battle for Developing Countries,” Conversation with K.M. Gopakumar, Pandemic Discourses, May 2021.
“Vaccine Chimeras,” Pandemic Discourses, December 2020.
“An Introduction: Pandemic Discourses,” (with Sakiko Fukuda Parr, Mark Frazier) Pandemic Discourses, May 2020.
“The IHME in the Shifting Landscape of Global Health Metrics,” Global Policy Journal, January 2019.
“Philanthropy and the Nation-State in Global Health: The Gates Foundation in India,” Global Public Health, December 2017.
"Rethinking Prevention: Shifting Conceptualizations of Evidence and Intervention in South Africa’s AIDS epidemic," BioSocieties, August 2017.
“The Right to Health as Right to Treatment: Shifting Conceptions of Public Health,” Social Research, Winter 2012.
HIV/AIDS, Security and Conflict: New Realities, New Responses. Social Science Research Council/The Hague, Clingendael Institute, New York.
Introduction to special issue, HIV/AIDS, Security and Conflict: New Realities, New Responses, co-authored with Alex de Waal and Jennifer Klot, Forced Migration Review, 2010.
“Birth in the Age of AIDS: Women Reproduction and HIV/AIDS in India,” Book review, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Summer 2015.
“Explaining AIDS in South Africa: A Role for History,” Book review, BioSocieties 4(1), March 2009.
“Designing Epidemics: Models, Policymaking, and Global Foreknowledge in India’s AIDS Crisis,” Science and Public Policy 35(8), October 2008.
“Inventing Global Ecology,” Book review, Conservation and Society 2(1), January 2004.
Research Interests
Global health, science and technology policy, digital governance, history of ethics, biotechnology, postcolonial democracies, international development, intellectual property, humanitarian emergencies, environmental politics, India, South Africa, China.