Biography

Dr. Sushant Kumar is an Assistant Professor and Assistant Dean of Social Outreach at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy. He has been a Fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School, Program in Science, Technology and Society and is a PhD in Public Policy from Northeastern University, Boston.

He works on the interface of knowledge (translating often to science/ technology and expertise) and society, with current research interests spanning governance of Artificial Intelligence and other emerging technologies, anticipatory governance, responsible innovation and science and technology policy broadly. His current projects include exploring sociotechnical imaginaries of AI in popular Indian discourse and alternative futures of GenAI in Indian higher education.

He is one of the knowledge architects of the Generative AI Network (GAIN) project, a global collaboration of scholars and practitioners from 14 countries, emphasizing South-South exchanges decentring AI discourse from centers of privilege and power. Earlier this year, he organized two conference panels, one in STS Conference Graz, Austria and another in International Conference on Public Policy, Chiang Mai, Thailand, on Democratizing AI.

He has taught courses across U.S and India in Science, Technology and Public Policy, Techniques of Policy Analysis and Data Analysis using Python and is going to teach Governing Artificial Intelligence in Spring 2026 at Jindal.

He uses a constructivist approach in his research to understand how ideas come to be, the role science and narratives play in legitimizing policy ideas, and how scientific evidence itself is socio-politically situated. He deploys interdisciplinary analytical frameworks from public policy, STS and political communication.

His work has been published in leading journals including The Lancet, Journal of South Asian Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, Behavioral Sciences, and in media platforms like The Wire, scroll.in and 360info. He has presented his work at leading international annual conferences of Society for Social Studies of Science, International Public Policy Association, Association of South Asian Studies, Association of Asian Studies and Science and Democracy Network at Harvard.