Akhil Gupta
· sociocultural anthropologistUniversity of California, Los Angeles · Anatomy and Cell Biology
Active 2005–2025
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About
Akhil Gupta is a sociocultural anthropologist currently working on questions of transnational capitalism, infrastructure, and corruption. He has been conducting research on call centers in India since 2009, with projects spanning from agriculture to state development agencies and multinational corporations. His research themes include contemporary capitalism, development, postcoloniality, globalization, and the state. Gupta's empirical work interrogates anthropological and social theory from its margins by focusing on the experiences of peasants and other groups of poor people in India. He combines cultural and sociological analyses of institutions and social life with questions raised by postcolonial theory, employing rigorous ethnographic research to rethink major questions in social theory related to space, place, and temporality. His approach emphasizes a deep understanding of specific places and peoples as a vantage point to critique and expand received ideas in social theory, with a sustained focus on rethinking and renewing anthropological methods.
Research topics
- Biology
- Bioinformatics
- Political Science
- Medicine
- Genetics
- Internal medicine
- Physiology
- Neuroscience
- Psychology
- Immunology
Selected publications
Brain–gut–microbiome interactions in obesity and food addiction
Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology · 2020 · 261 citations
1st authorCorresponding2018-01-01 · 184 citations
book-chapterSenior authorEndocrine Reviews · 2021 · 122 citations
In May 2014, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) stated its intent to "require applicants to consider sex as a biological variable (SABV) in the design and analysis of NIH-funded research involving animals and cells." Since then, proposed research plans that include animals routinely state that both sexes/genders will be used; however, in many instances, researchers and reviewers are at a loss about the issue of sex differences. Moreover, the terms sex and gender are used interchangeably by…
Rethinking the Anthropology of Corruption
Current Anthropology · 2018-03-08 · 114 citations
articleSenior authorIn our introduction to this special issue, we take stock of where the anthropological literature on corruption has come and where it might go next. Our goal is neither to provide an exhaustive literature review nor to summarize the papers gathered together in this issue. Rather, we aim to identify especially promising areas in need of more focused research and analytic attention and to articulate pressing questions within those areas. Toward that end, we theorize corruption as an object of analy…
2018-01-01 · 110 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Recent grants
NIH · $674k · 2014
Frequent coauthors
- 236 shared
Emeran A. Mayer
University of California, Los Angeles
- 168 shared
Jennifer S. Labus
University of California, Los Angeles
- 122 shared
Kirsten Tillisch
- 103 shared
Bruce D. Naliboff
University of California, Los Angeles
- 101 shared
Tien S. Dong
Center for Neurologic Study
- 98 shared
Lisa A. Kilpatrick
University of California, Los Angeles
- 79 shared
Ravi R. Bhatt
University of Southern California
- 61 shared
Jonathan P. Jacobs
University of California, Los Angeles
Labs
UCLA Department of AnthropologyPI
Education
- 1988
Ph.D., Engineering-Economic Systems
Stanford University
- 1980
S.M., Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Awards & honors
- Visiting Professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes En Sciences Soci…
- Visiting Professor, Danish Research School of Anthropology a…
- Goel Lecturer, University of British Columbia, Vancouver (20…
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