My journey to becoming an economist
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13133/2037-3643/19529Keywords:
colonial India, Post-Keynesian economics, heterodox economics, global SouthAbstract
In this autobiographical essay, Sunanda Sen retraces her formation as an economist – a woman from the global South who came of age in post-independence Calcutta. From her studies at Presidency College and a doctorate at Calcutta University, through teaching at Jadavpur University and, from 1973, at the newly founded Centre for Economic Studies and Planning of Jawaharlal Nehru University, she recalls the people and institutions that shaped her work. International experiences at Yale Cambridge, Paris, and elsewhere brought her into dialogue with heterodox economists across the Keynesian and Marxist traditions. Throughout, she reflects on what it meant to pursue heterodox economics from the periphery.
References
Bagchi A.K. (2006), Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendency of Capital, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Bharadwaj K. (1989), Themes in Value and Distribution: Classical Theory Reappraised, London: Unwin Hyman.
Datta B. (1978), Indian Economic Thought: Twentieth century perspectives, 1900-1950, New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill.
Epstein G. (ed) (2005), Financialisation and the World Economy, Cheltenham (UK) and Northampton (MA, USA): Edward Elgar.
Fontaine J. and Halevi J. (eds) (1998), Restoring Demand in the World Economy: Trade, Finance and Technology, Cheltenham (UK) and Northampton (MA, USA): Edward Elgar.
Sen S. (1967), “Economics of External Borrowing: The Liquidity Constraint and the Two-Gap models of Foreign Aid”, Yale Economic Growth Centre Working Paper, no. 34, New Haven (CT): Yale Department of Economics. Available online.
Sen S. (1992), Colonies and the Empire: India 1870–1914, Calcutta: Orient Longman.
Sen S. (ed.) (1996), Financial Fragility, Debt and Economic Reforms, London: Macmillan.
Sen S. (2007a), “China in the Bull Shop: Dealing with Finance after the WTO”, in A.K. Bagchi and G.A. Dymski (eds), Capture and Exclude: Developing Economies and the Poor in Global Finance, New Delhi: Tulika Books.
Sen S. (2007b), Globalisation and Development, New Delhi: National Book Trust.
Sen S. (2009), Unfreedom and Waged Work: Labour in India’s Manufacturing Industry, New Delhi: Sage India.
Sen S. (2014), Dominant Finance and Stagnant Economies, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Sen S. (2025), Subordination and Development: Emerging Market Economies of Asia and Latin America, New Delhi: Tulika (distributed abroad by Columbia University Press).
Tomlinson B.R. (1993), The Economy of Modern India, 1860–1970, The New Cambridge History of India III.3, Cambridge University Press.
Triffin R. (1960), Gold and the Dollar Crisis: The Future of Convertibility, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Wray L.R. (2015), Modern Money Theory, Basingstoke (UK): Palgrave Macmillan.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Sunanda Sen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
