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Professor Craig Jeffrey

• Academic Profile
• Current Research
• Current Teaching
• Publications

Academic Profile

Craig Jeffrey works on contemporary Indian society and global youth, especially Indian democracy, educational transformation, globalization, and the politics of youth. He has published a large number of books and articles in these areas, sponsored by grants from the British Academy, National Science Foundation and Economic and Social Research Council. He is currently leading a large international project on the politics of educated unemployed youth in South Asia, sponsored by a major grant from the Economic and Social Research Council and is working on a book on corruption in modern India based upon four years of fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh, north India (conducted in Hindi and Urdu since 1995). Other interests include ethnographic writing. Craig Jeffrey also writes regularly for major news and literary journals (especially The Guardian, and Times Literary Supplement) and broadcasts on BBC Radio Four. He edits the Global Youth book series at Temple University Press and he is on the editorial board of several journals, including Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Geoforum, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, Journal of South Asian Development, Journal of South Asian Studies, and Pacific Affairs. Craig Jeffrey's books and articles have been translated into several languages including Hindi, Turkish, and Japanese.

Current Research

Craig is currently leading a project on the politics of educated unemployed youth in South Asia funded by a 1.16 million ESRC grant. Rising schooling and a shortage of salaried jobs has created a crisis of educated unemployment in the global South. But we know very little about what educated unemployed youth are doing. Our research team (Professor Craig Jeffrey and Dr Jane Dyson, Professor David Gellner and Dr Amanda Snellinger, and Professor Jonathan Spencer and Dr Dhana Hughes) are conducting detailed ethnographic research in three areas of South Asia (India, Nepal and Sri Lanka) with a view to understanding educated unemployed young people's political practices. From a scholarly perspective, we hope to use youth as a lens through which to understand the changing nature of work, education, politics and civil society around the world. We are also centrally interested in enhancing public understanding of young people: Marginalized youth are often imagined as "anomic"; but they may also be involved in forms of "positive youth politics" in different parts of South Asia and the world.

• Alchemists of the Revolution? The politics of educated unemployed youth
  Financial support from the ESRC; 2012-2015.
• Dowry Marriage in India
  Oxford-Princeton Collaborative Grant (with Professor Isabelle Clark-Deces in Princeton and Dr Jane Dyson in Oxford); £18,000.
• Lost in Transition? Comparative Analysis of Educated Unemployed Young Men
  St John's College Research Centre, Oxford University; £40,000.
• Fixing Futures: New Politicians and Low-caste Democratization in India
  Financial support from National Science Foundation (Geography panel co-sponsored by Political Science panel), USA; 2009-2011.
• Educated Underemployment and Intergenerational Politics in India
  Financial support from Royalty Research Fund, University of Washington, USA; 2007-2008.
• Democracy, Higher Education and Youth Cultures: Student Politics in North India
  Financial support from Economic and Social Research Council Research, UK; 2004-2005.
• Muslim Girls' Education in India, with Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery
  Financial support from Ford Foundation; 2001-2002.
• Household Strategies, Schooling Regimes and Social Exclusion in Western UP, India, with Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery
  Financial support from Economic and Social Research Council Research Grant; 2000-2002.
• Reimagining Corruption in India: Public-Sector Recruitment and Social Inequality
  Financial support from HSBC Holdings Small Research Grant Award administered by Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers; 2000-2001.

Current Postdoctoral Research Associates (and funding source)

• Dr Jane Dyson
  Alchemists of the Revolution (ESRC) India research associate
• Dr Dhana Hughes
  Alchemists of the Revolution (ESRC) Sri Lanka research associate
• Dr Amanda Snellinger
  Alchemists of the Revolution (ESRC) India research associate

Current Graduate Students

• Ariell Ahearn-Lingham
  "The changing meaning of work, herding, and social relations in Mongolia: a study of value transformations and conditions for social change"
• Jonathan Balls
  "The potential and challenges for the nascent Indian off-grid solar power sector, in the age of sustainable development"
• Nicholas Simcik-Arese
  "Claiming the satellite city: Conceptions of livelihood and ownership in Cairo's occupied youth housing estates"
• Andrea Koelbel
  "Up and away: educated youth, future aspirations, and mobilities in Kathmandu, Nepal"
• Ashok Kumar
  "Building labour power against global capital: a case study from the shop floors and shantytowns of Bangalore"
• Tanya Kumar
  "Negotiating a living: child workers in Kolkata"
• David Maguire
  "Learning to serve time: troubling spaces of working class masculinities in the UK"
• Gregory Ortiz
  "New connections: middle class youth activism in Delhi."
• Sahar Romani
  "Generation NGO: growing up with development in India"
• Charlotte Von Mangoldt
  "Student environmental activism in China"
• Cheng Yi'En
  "The role of technologies in producing and supporting young transmigrants' everyday lives and aspirations"

Teaching

Craig Jeffrey is interested in hearing from scholars who wish to conduct doctoral or post-doctoral work on international development, agrarian change, youth, class politics, and state/society relations, within and beyond south Asia. He has supervised over thirty postgraduate Masters and Doctoral dissertations in the UK and US.

Dr Jeffrey is a Fellow of St John's College, where he is responsible for advising undergraduates on their studies over the course of their three-year degrees. His goals as an educator are situated within the University of Oxford's mission of creating an excellent and accessible educational environment for students from a wide variety of backgrounds. He has for long been involved in initiatives that combine teaching, research, and community engagement. In 2000 he organized a symposium at the University of Edinburgh for seventy Scottish high school geography teachers in which school and university educators exchanged ideas. In 2007 he worked with five undergraduate students at the University of Washington over 12 weeks to develop theatre-based workshops for a federally-sponsored program designed to improve educational opportunities for students from low-income schools. He uses a diverse range of teaching methods, including narrative, role play, video, on-line discussion, and field trips. He has obtained a Professional Certificate in University Teaching in the UK and was twice nominated for the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Washington.

Selected Publications

Books:

• Corbridge, S., Harriss, J. and Jeffrey, C. (2012) India Today: Economy, Society and Politics. Cambridge: Polity; Indian edition published by Oxford University Press, Delhi. 332 pp. ISBN: 9780745661117.
• Jeffrey, C. (2010) Timepass: Youth, Class and the Politics of Waiting. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cambridge University Press 2011. 232 pp. ISBN-10: 0804770735.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and R. Jeffery (2008) Degrees Without Freedom? Education, Masculinities and Unemployment in North India. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (2nd edition published in India by Social Science Press 2010, Hindi edition appearing with Prakash Publishers, Delhi, 2011). 256 pp. ISBN-10: 0804757429.
• Jeffrey, C., and J. Dyson (2008) Telling Young Lives: Portraits of Global Youth. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. 232 pp. ISBN: 1-59213-931-0.

Special Issues of Journals

• Jeffrey, C. and McFarlane, C. (2008) Performing Cosmopolitanism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3).
• Jeffrey, C. (2007) Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India. Geoforum, 38(4).
• Jeffrey, C. and McDowell, L. (2004) Youth in a Comparative Perspective: Global Change, Local Lives. Special issue of Youth and Society, 36(2).

Articles and Papers

• Jeffrey C. (in press, 2013) Introduction. In, Jeffery, R., Lerche, J. and C. Jeffrey (eds.) Development Failure and Identity Politics in Uttar Pradesh. Delhi: Sage.
• Jeffrey, C. and Dyson, J. (2013) Zigzag capitalism: youth entrepreneurship in the contemporary global South. Geoforum.
• Jeffrey, C. (2012) Geographies of children and youth III: alchemists of the revolution? Progress in Human Geography.
• Jeffrey, C. (2012) Comparing across contexts. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(2): 505-507.
• Jeffrey, C. and Young, S. (2012) Waiting for change: youth, caste and politics in India. Economy and Society, 41(4): 638-661.
• Young, S. and Jeffrey, C. (2012) Making ends meet: youth at the rural-urban intersections. Economic and Political Weekly, 47(30): 45-51.
• Jeffrey, C. (2012) Global Godot. Dialogues in Human Geography, 2(1): 106-109.
• Jeffrey, C. (2012) A Review of "India Rising" by Oliver Balch. Times Literary Supplement, 25th July, 32.
• Jeffrey, C. (2012) A review of "Revolution 20/20" by Chetan Bhagat. Times Literary Supplement, 19th February, 27.
• Jeffrey, C. (2012) A review of "India: The Road Ahead" by Mark Tully. Times Literary Supplement, 2nd September, 40.
• Jeffrey, C. (2011) A review of "Indian Youth in a Transforming World: Attitudes and Perceptions" by Peter de Souza et al. Pacific Affairs, 84(3): 186-188.
• Jeffrey, C. (2011) Geographies of Children and Youth II: Global youth agency. Progress in Human Geography.
• Jeffrey, C., Philliou, C., Rogers, D. and Shryock, A. (2011) Fixers in motion. A Conversation. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 53(3): 692-707.
• Jeffery, R., Jeffery, P. and Jeffrey, C. (2011) Parhai Ka Mahaul? An educational environment in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh. Chapter 6 in, De Neve, G. and H. Donner (eds.) (2011) The Meaning of the Local: Politics of place in urban India. Routledge, 238 pp. ISBN: 9780415596237.
• Jeffrey, C. (2011) Great expectations: youth in contemporary India. In, Clark-Deces, I. (ed.) A Companion to The Anthropology of India. Oxford, Blackwell. 568 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4051-9892-9.
• Jeffrey, C. (2010) Contradictory youth politics: student mobilisation in Uttar Pradesh. Chapter 6 in, Price, P. and A.E. Ruud (eds.) Power and Influence in India: Bosses, lords and captains. London, Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-415-58595-8.
• Jeffrey, C. (2010) Demoralizing developments: ethics, class, and student power in modern north India. Chapter 10 in, Pandian, A. and D. Ali (eds.) Ethical Life in South Asia. Indiana University Press. pp. 192-210. ISBN-13: 978-0-253-22243-5.
• Jeffrey, C. (2010) Timepass: youth, class and time in India. American Ethnologist, 37(3): 465-481.
• Jeffrey, C. (2010) Geographies of children and youth I: eroding maps of life. Progress in Human Geography, 39( 4): 496-505.
• Jeffrey, C. (2009) Fixing futures: educated unemployment through a north Indian lens. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 51(1): 182-211.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R. (2008) Dalit revolution? New politicians in Uttar Pradesh. Journal of Asian Studies, 67(4): 1365-1396.
• Jeffrey, C. (2008) Waiting. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(6): 954-958.
• Jeffrey, C. (2008) Generation nowhere: rethinking youth through the lens of unemployed young men. Progress in Human Geography, 32(6): 739-758.
• Jeffrey, C. (2008) Kicking away the ladder: student politics and the making of an Indian middle class. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3): 517-536. Reprinted in International Quarterly Asian Studies (in press, 2009).
• Jeffrey, C. and McFarlane, C. (2008) Performing cosmopolitanism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3): 472-480.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2008) Disputing contraception: Muslim reform, secular change and fertility. Modern Asian Studies, 42(3): 519-548.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, R. and Jeffery, P. (2008) Schooling and/or madrasah education: gender and the strategies of Muslim young men in rural north India. Compare, 38(5): 581-593.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2008) From Sir Syed to Sachar: Muslim education in Bijnor District, Uttar Pradesh. Indian Journal of Secularism, 12(2): 11-35.
• Jeffrey, C. and Dyson, J. (2008) Introduction. In, Jeffrey, C. and J. Dyson (eds.) Telling Young Lives: Portraits of Global Youth. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. pp. 1-14.
• Jeffrey, C. (2008) From footballs to fixer: Suresh. In, Jeffrey, C. and J. Dyson (eds.) Telling Young Lives: Portraits of Global Youth. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. pp. 137-147.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R. (2008) Zamir. In, M. Bannerjee (ed.) Muslim Portraits. New Delhi: Penguin.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2008) Afrozi. In, M. Bannerjee (ed.) Muslim Portraits. New Delhi: Penguin.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2007) Investing in the future: education in the social and cultural reproduction of Muslims in UP. In, M. Hasan (ed.) Living with Secularism: The Destiny of India's Muslims. New Delhi: Manohar. pp. 63-89.
• Jeffrey, C. (2007) Foreword. In, D. Behera (ed.) Childhood in South Asia. Oxford: Pearson Education. pp. x-xi.
• Jeffery, R., Jeffery, P. and Jeffrey, C. (2006) Patterns and discourses of the privatisation of secondary schooling in Bijnor, UP. In, Ősterheld, J. and K. Kumar (eds.) Education in Modern South Asia. New Delhi: Sage. pp. 96-117.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R. (2006) Urbane geographies: education, unemployment and gender in rural Uttar Pradesh. In, Corbridge, S., Kumar, S. and S. Raju (eds.) Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies of India. New Delhi: Sage. pp 223-240.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R., and Jeffrey, C. (2006) The first Madrasah: learned Mawlawīs and the educated mother. In, J-P. Hartung and H. Reifeld (eds.) Islamic Education, Diversity and National Identity: Dīnī Madāris in India Post 9/11. New Delhi: Sage. pp. 227-251.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R. (2005) Reproducing difference? Schooling, jobs and empowerment in Uttar Pradesh, India. World Development, 33(12): 2085-2101.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffrey, R. and Jeffery, P. (2005) When schooling fails: young men, education and low caste politics in north India. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 39: 1-38.
• Jeffery, R., Jeffrey, C. and Jeffery, P. (2005) Parhai ka Mahaul: an educational environment in Bijnor, India. In, De Neve, G. and H. Donner (eds) The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India. London: UCL Press. Pages 116-140.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2005) The mother's lap and the civilising mission: Madrasah education and rural Muslim girls in western Uttar Pradesh. In, Hasan, Z. and R. Menon (eds.) In a Minority: Essays on Muslim Women in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. pp. 108-148.
• Jeffery, R., Jeffery, P. and Jeffrey, C. (2005) Social inequality and the privatisation of secondary schooling in north India. In, Chopra, R. and P. Jeffery (eds.) Educational Regimes in Contemporary India. Sage: New Delhi. pp. 41-61.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffrey, R. and Jeffery, P. (2005) Broken trajectories: Dalit young men and formal education. In, Chopra, R. and P. Jeffery (eds.) Educational Regimes in Contemporary India. Sage: New Delhi. pp. 256-275.
• Jeffrey, C. and McDowell, L. (2004) Youth in a comparative perspective: global change, local lives. Youth and Society, 36(2): 131-142.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R. (2004) 'A Useless Thing!' or 'Nectar of the Gods'? The cultural production of education and young men's struggles for respect in liberalizing north India. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(4): 961-981.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffrey, R. and Jeffery, P. (2004) Degrees without freedom: assessing the social and economic impact of formal education on Dalit young men in north India. Development and Change, 35(5): 963-986.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2004) Islamisation, gentrification and domestication: 'A girls' Islamic course' and rural Muslims in western Uttar Pradesh. Modern Asian Studies, 38(1): 1-52.
• Jeffrey, C. (2003) Bridging the gulf between secondary school and university-level geography teachers: reflections on organising a UK teachers' conference. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 27(2): 201-216.
• Jeffrey, C. (2003) Soft states, hard bargains: rich farmers, class reproduction and the local state in rural north India. In, Lerche, J. and R. Jeffery (eds.) Social and Political Change in Uttar Pradesh: European Perspectives. New Dehli: Manohar. pp. 225-246.
• Jeffrey, C. (2002) Caste, class and clientelism: a political economy of everyday corruption in rural north India. Economic Geography, 78(1): 21-42.
• Jeffery, R., Jeffrey, C. and Jeffery, P. (2001) Social and political dominance in western UP: a response to Sudha Pai. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 35(2): 213-236.
• Jeffrey, C. (2001) 'A fist is stronger than five fingers': caste and dominance in rural North India. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 25(2): 217-236.
• Jeffrey, C. (2001) A fist is stronger than five fingers: caste and dominance in rural north India. In, Bradnock, R. and G. Williams (eds.) South Asia in a Globalising World: a Reconstructed Regional Geography. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education (revised version of a paper published in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers). pp. 205-228.
• Jeffrey, C. and Lerche, J. (2001) Dimensions of dominance: the state and class reproduction in Uttar Pradesh, India. In, Fuller, C. and V. Benei (eds.) The Everyday State in Modern India. London: Hurst and Company (revised version of a paper published in Development and Change). pp. 91-114.
• Jeffrey, C. (2000) Democratisation without representation? The power and political strategies of a rural elite in north India. Political Geography, 19(8): 1013-1036.
• Jeffrey, C. and Lerche, J. (2000) Stating the difference: state, discourse and class reproduction in Uttar Pradesh, India. Development and Change, 31(4): 857-878.
• Jeffrey, C. (1999) Dictionary definitions of 'Border/Borderlands,' 'Categories/Categorical', 'Deterritorialisation', 'Third Space', 'Travelling Theory', 'The West/Westernization'. In, McDowell, L. and J. Sharp (eds.) A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography. London: Arnold. pp. 20-21, 27, 55-56, 274-275, 281-282, 292-293.
• Jeffrey, C. (1997) Richer farmers and agrarian change in Meerut District, Uttar Pradesh, India. Environment and Planning, A, 29(12): 2113-212.

Media Broadcasts

• 2012 - "India's quick fix solutions", Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent, 20/10/12.
• 2012 - "Indian viagra", Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent, 7/7/12.
• 2011 - "India's vibrant anti-corruption activists", Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent, 3/12/11.
• 2011 - "India haunted by caste", Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent, 9/7/11.
• 2011 - "Indian democracy:" one man, one bribe", Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent, 11/6/11.
• 2011 - "Youth in limbo", BBC World Service From Our Own Correspondent, 19/05/11.

Recent Media Publications

• 2013 - "India lags behind China", letter in The Guardian, 6th February.
• 2013 - "We must all counter the mood music of rape culture", letter in The Guardian, 9th January.
• 2012 - "Jugaad neoliberalism", letter in The Guardian, 9th October.
• 2012 - "Taking to the Streets to defend democracy", letter in The Guardian, 26th September.
• 2012 - "Himalayan Hopes", with Dr Jane Dyson, ESRC's Society Now magazine, Autumn 2012.
• 2012 - "India banks on rush for aphrodisiac fungus before supply droops", The Guardian, 30th July.
• 2012 - "The Viagra transforming local economies in India", BBC News Magazine, 7th July.
• 2011 - "India's vibrant anti-corruption activists", BBC News Magazine, 3rd December.
• 2010 - "Neither booming nor backward", London Review of Books, 27/09/10.
• 2010 - "Indian democracy: One man, one bribe", London Review of Books, 12/06/10.
• 2010 - "The politics of waiting", The Guardian, 23/05/2010.
• 2010 - "Sixty years of change in India", The Guardian, 25/01/10.
• 2009 - "Young, educated and jobless in India", The Guardian, 29/11/09.