Dr. Kishen Shastry

Founding Lead, Chanakya Fellowship in Social Sciences

Dr. Kishen Shastry is an economist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, affiliated with the Faculty of Economics and Cambridge Judge Business School. He also serves as an Advisor to the Centre for Integral Economics at Chanakya University. His research interests include the economics of religion and network economics, and his policy-facing work engages closely with digital public infrastructure through his role at the Global Development Network. He holds a Master’s degree in International Economics from the Geneva Graduate Institute and was a Young India Fellow at Ashoka University. He is also an Adam Smith Fellow at the Mercatus Centre and a Rising Leaders Fellow at Aspen UK.

Ashutosh Patil

Programme Manager

Ashutosh Patil serves as Programme Manager for the Chanakya Fellowship in Social Sciences (CFSS) at Chanakya University, where he leads the strategic, academic, and operational design of the flagship programme focused on International Relations, Public Policy, Economics, Law, and Development Studies.

He has previously been associated with the Hudson Institute as a Research Assistant (RA) on India and South Asia policy. He also served as a Graduate Fellow in Legislative Affairs and Advocacy at the UN Foundation in Washington, D.C. Additionally, he has worked in geopolitical risk analysis at Bower Group Asia (BGA) in Washington, D.C, and as a Research and Communications Fellow at the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC). He previously held the position of Legislative and Research Associate at the Lok Sabha Secretariat in the Parliament of India (2020–21).

Ashutosh holds a BA LL.B. (Hons.) from Symbiosis Law School, Pune, and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.