Alpa was raised in Nairobi, read Geography at Cambridge and completed her PhD in Anthropology at the LSE, where she now teaches in the Department of Anthropology. She leads on the ‘Global Economies of Care’research theme at the LSE International Inequalities Institute.

Alpa is author of Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas, winner of the 2020 Association for Political and Legal Anthropology Prize, shortlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the New India Foundation Book Prize, and longlisted for the Tata Literature Live non-fiction book award. She is also the author of In the Shadows of the State (2010) and co-author of Ground Down by Growth (2018).

Alpa has reported for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service on several occasions, including presenting and recording the radio documentary ‘India’s Red Belt’ for Crossing Continents. She has also co-curated a major photo exhibition, ‘Behind the Indian Boom’.

You can find out more about Alpa’s work here.