Akshay Mangla is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science. He is interested in the political economy of developing countries, especially the relationship between economic development and social welfare, democratic governance, and state-society relations. His interests also include normative political theory, particularly theories of justice, the state and civil society, and the concepts of liberty, agency and autonomy.
Currently, Akshay is developing a dissertation project that seeks to explain why some states in India have made greater progress towards eliminating child labor than others. The project involves fieldwork across multiple states and administrative districts, and builds on prior research that he conducted in the carpet industry of Uttar Pradesh. Akshay graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in philosophy and B.S. in finance, and he earned a Masters with Distinction from the University of Oxford.
email: amangla@mit.edu