Dr. Appadurai’s research and teaching at BGC focuses on the intersection of material culture studies, anthropology, social history, and economics.

Dr. Appadurai joins BGC from New York University where he has served as Goddard Professor in Media, Culture and Communication and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge. Dr. Appadurai retired from his post at NYU at the end of the 2020-21 academic year but retains other concurrent academic positions including: Mercator Fellow, Free University and Humboldt University, Berlin; Honorary Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University, Rotterdam; and Senior Research Partner at the Max-Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Gottingen. Dr. Appadurai continues to be based in Berlin and primarily teaches courses at BGC remotely.

His previous positions include Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at The New School, and William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of International Studies and Director of the Initiative on Cities and Globalization at Yale University. He has held professorial chairs at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, and has visiting professorships at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Oxford, University of Delhi, University of Michigan, University of Amsterdam, Humboldt University, Witwatersrand University, and EHESS (Paris).