Prof. Chandan Gowda obtained his Bachelor's degree in Arts (social science) from St. Joseph’s College, Bengaluru and an MA in Sociology from the University of Hyderabad. He obtained his Ph.D. Certificate from the University of Pittsburgh in Cultural Studies. He then moved to the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, which had a strong research programme in historical sociology and obtained his Ph.D. there.

He then took up the position of Associate Professor of Sociology, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at the National Law School of India, Bengaluru and later served as Professor of Sociology at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He held the position of Ramakrishna Hegde Chair Professor of Decentralization and Development at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru, until recently. His areas of research include Indian intellectual history and modern Kannada literature and cinema.

Besides academic publications, he has translated Kannada fiction and non-fiction into English. He has also directed Sahitya Sahavasa (In the Company of Literature), a series of video lectures of U. R. Ananthamurthy on modern Kannada writers, which was telecast on Doordarshan in 2014. He has organized workshops and panel discussions involving academics and artists, written extensively in Indian newspapers (The Hindu, The Mint, Indian Express, Hindustan Times), and participated frequently in panel discussions on national television. All of these activities have flowed from his belief that he should be engaged in non-academic public fora. He has served on the juries for the Fiction as well as the Non-Fiction Prizes for The Hindu Lit for Life Festivals. He contributed a weekly column, Culture and Politics, in Bangalore Mirror for over five years and has also contributed a monthly column, 'The Living Stream,' in the Deccan Herald since 2019.

• PhD in Sociology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

• Social Theory
• Indian Normative Traditions
• Kannada Literature and Cinema

Books:


• Longing for an Elsewhere: Mysore and The Making of India’s Developmental State (Modern South Asia Series, Oxford University Press, New York, Forthcoming, 2025).
• Another India: Memories, Events, People (Simon and Schuster-India, 2023). NB: The Hindi edition forthcoming, Rajkamal Prakashan, 2025.

Edited Books:


• Editor, Sangama – Pastorale: The Kannada and English stories of Rajalakshmi N. Rao (Sankathana Publishers, July 2025).
• Co-Editor, The Essential UR Ananthamurthy Reader (Aleph Book Company, 2023).
• Editor, A Life in the World: UR Ananthamurthy in conversation with Chandan Gowda (HarperCollins- India, 2019).
• Editor, The Way I See It: The Gauri Lankesh Reader (Navayana and DC Books, 2017).
• Editor, Theatres of Democracy: Selected Essays of Shiv Visvanathan (HarperCollins-India, 2016).

Translations:


• Editor, The Greatest Kannada Stories Ever Told, ( Aleph Book Company, Forthcoming, 2025).
• Editor, Daredevil Mustafa: The Short Stories of KP Purnachandra Tejasvi (Forthcoming, HarperCollins-India, 2026).
• Translator, Bara, a Kannada novella by UR Ananthamurthy (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Journal Articles/Book Chapters:


• “Old Mysore: A Milieu for an Artist,” Nation, Region, Modernity: The Art of K. Venkatappa (Editors) Deeptha Achar and N. Pushpamala (Routledge, London and NY, 2025).
• “Bengaluru in History (in French),” Critique, Special Issue: L’Inde Colossale et Capitale (Guest Editor: Divya Dwivedi), Translated by Francoise Balibar, Vol 76, No. 872- 873, Jan-Feb, 2020.
• “The Making of the Development Man: An Experiment in Recovery,” Jindal Journal of Public Policy, Vol 3, No. 1, 2016.
• “Empire and Developmentalism in Colonial India,” Sociology and Empire: The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline (Ed.) George Steinmetz (Duke University Press, 2013).
• “Many Lohias? Appropriations of Lohia in Karnataka,” Special Issue on Ram Manohar Lohia, Economic and Political Weekly (Guest Editor) Yogendra Yadav, Vol 45, No. 40, October 2, 2010 (Translated into Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam and Marathi).