Sarah Besky

I am Associate Professor in the Department of Global Labor and Work in the ILR School and Director of the South Asia Program in the Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University.

Before coming to Cornell, from 2015-2020, I was Charles Evans Hughes 1881 Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. From 2012-2015, I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows.  I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012. 

I have studied the Indian tea industry since 2006 and published two books (The Darjeeling Distinction and Tasting Qualities) and several articles based on this research.  I also co-edited the School for Advanced Research volume How Nature Works with Alex Blanchette (Tufts University). 

My new research is a historical ethnography of the concept of settlement in colonial and postcolonial India. It draws on work in Kalimpong, West Bengal, on the India-Bhutan border and explores the intersections of farming, science, agricultural extension, land tenure, and climate change.