Sonalde Desai is a Professor of Sociology at University of Maryland with joint appointment as a Senior Fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi. She received Ph.D. from Stanford University and post-doctoral training at University of Chicago and The RAND Corporation. She is a demographer whose work deals primarily with human development in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. She studies employment, education and maternal and child health outcomes by locating them within the policy discourse and political economy of the region. While much of her research focuses on India, she has also undertaken comparative studies across South Asia, Latin America and Sub Saharan Africa. She has published articles in a wide range of sociological and demographic journals and frequently writes for newspapers. Presently she is leading a large nationally representative panel survey, India Human Development Survey, at NCAER.