Adam Auerbach

Adam Auerbach joins the FAS as Associate Professor of Political Science. His research focuses on local governance, urban politics, and the political economy of development, with a regional focus on South Asia and India in particular. Auerbach’s first book, Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Goods Provision in India’s Urban Slums (Cambridge University Press, 2020), accounts for the uneven success of India’s slum residents in demanding and securing essential public services from the state. Demanding Development won the Dennis Judd Best Book Award from the Urban and Local Politics Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). His second and co-authored book, Migrants and Machine Politics: How India’s Urban Poor Seek Representation and Responsiveness, was published with Princeton University Press in 2023. Migrants and Machine Politics won the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, the Francine Frankel Book Prize from the South Asia Section of APSA, the Giovanni Sartori Book Award from the Qualitative and Mixed-Methods Research Section of APSA, and the Best Book Award from the Experimental Research Section of APSA. Auerbach’s research on governance and development in India has also been published in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, and World Politics, among other journals. During the 2022–2023 academic year, Auerbach was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at the World Bank.