Assa Doron is Professor of Anthropology at the College of Asia and the Pacific’s School of Culture, History, and Language at The Australian National University.

Much of his anthropological fieldwork was carried in Varanasi, India, where he focused on the ritual economy of the river and questions of caste and identity politics. The study was published in the book, Life on the Ganga (Cambridge, 2013).

His collaboration with Robin Jeffrey led to two co‑authored books, the first on the mobile phone revolution in India and its impact on social life, The Great Indian Phone Book: How the Cheap Cell Phone Changes Business, Politics, and Daily Life (Harvard, 2013), and Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India (Harvard, 2018).