Ananya Mukherjee-Reed is Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies and a Professor of Political Science at York University. This is the largest liberal arts Faculty in Canada with a vibrant community of 23,000 students. She was recently named as one the five brilliant women from academia by Canadian Immigrant magazine in their Third Annual Tribute to 'Immigrant Women of Inspiration'. In 2016, she was awarded the Pioneer of Change award for excellence in social impact by Skills for Change, Toronto.

Dean Mukherjee-Reed's teaching and research focus primarily on the theme of human development, broadly defined. The theme that dominates her work is justice, particularly gender justice. She is the Founding-Director of the International Secretariat of Human Development (ISHD) at York University. Under her leadership, ISHD has collaborated with leading international institutions such as the International Labour Organization, Geneva; United Nations Office for Project Services, Rome; United Nations Development Program; and the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva. From 2014-2015 she served as the Associate Vice-President of Research at York University. Please click on the "Publications" tab for details of her work.

Mukherjee-Reed is a critical, interdisciplinary scholar in the field of ‘Development’, broadly defined. Her undergraduate and masters degrees are in Economics and her doctoral degree is an interdisciplinary degree with training in Economics, Sociology and Political Science. The bulk of her work, especially since 2008, has sought to contribute to theories of alternative development. The theme that dominates my current work is justice, particularly gender justice. Mukherjee-Reed's perspective on justice is inspired by critical philosophers both in the West (such as Iris Marion Young) and in India (such as India’s iconic poet-philosopher Tagore, the brilliant humanist and legal visionary BR Ambedkar, and India’s major women’s movements). The core idea that these movements and these theorists share is that justice is not simply a matter of distributing resources between groups; rather, justice requires altering the underlying processes that generate the inequities between groups.

Mukherjee-Reed's earlier work, particular prior to taking on as Chair of Political Science, involved extensive international collaboration in India, several countries of Central America and UN organizations. Her work on the women-led food justice movement in India began from such a collaboration. In addition to the academic outputs, she has been interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, BBC online, The Hindu, Radio Paris and other outlets. It is currently being made into a documentary by an award-winning director in India

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Degrees

Community Contributions

In 2011, I have become actively involved in promoting the work on Rabindranath Tagore, the world's first non-European Nobel Laureate. I have created a special website for this occasion.

Research Interests