Professor Rusha Das is an Assistant Professor in the Public Policy Area at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. Her teaching and research focus on the political economy of regulation, environmental governance, and the interaction between markets, institutions, and public policy. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on political theory, policy analysis, and qualitative research methods to examine how regulatory frameworks function in practice.

Professor Das received her PhD from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, where her doctoral research examined the politics of environmental impact assessment and regulatory governance in India. Her work has received international recognition, including commendation from the Academy of Management’s Critical Management Studies Division, for its contribution to debates on power, regulation, and institutional change. She was also felicitated with the Young Women Researcher Award in Public Policy by Venus International Foundation.

Her research has been published in leading international journals, including Development and Change. Her ongoing work is currently under review at top-tier journals such as the Journal of Management Studies and Organization Studies. A key emerging strand of her scholarship engages with prefigurative politics, examining how alternative institutional practices and governance arrangements are enacted in the present to prefigure more democratic and sustainable futures.

Professor Das’s scholarship has a strong international orientation. She has been a Research Fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, and has been associated with the Exeter Centre for Environmental Law, contributing to interdisciplinary research on environmental regulation and sustainability transitions. She has also received competitive research funding from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, supporting collaborative work on local environmental democracy and green transitions.

In addition to her research and teaching, Professor Das is actively involved in the design of international immersion initiatives at IIM Bangalore. She designed and led the inaugural Business Planning for International Markets (BPIM) programme’s Switzerland module, marking IIMB’s first engagement with the Swiss market. The course examines how firms navigate international markets shaped by strong regulatory regimes, sustainability imperatives, and complex institutional contexts.

The module included academic and practitioner engagements with key international institutions such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Office at Geneva, Deloitte, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the University of Geneva, the Geneva Chancellery, and the Swiss-Indian Chamber of Commerce, offering participants a first-hand understanding of the institutional architecture shaping global business and policy environments.

At IIM Bangalore, Professor Das teaches environmental politics at the doctoral level and the core Business, Government, and Society: Ethics and Responsible Business course for PGP students. Across her teaching, research, and programme engagement, she consistently emphasises the importance of understanding markets as institutionally embedded systems shaped by regulation, social norms, and public purpose.