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Professor Dr. S Akbar Zaidi is a Political Economist. He has been a Professor at Columbia University, New York, since 2010, and has held a joint position at SIPA (the School of International and Public Affairs), and at MESAAS (the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies). He is also an Adjunct Professor at the IBA, Karachi, teaching one semester each year since 2011. He is a political economist with interests in political economy, development, the social sciences more generally, and increasingly, History.

He has taught at Karachi University and at Johns Hopkins and has written over 80 academic articles in international journals and as chapters in books, as well as numerous books and monographs. Amongst his books, are: Military, Civil Society and Democratization in Pakistan (2011), The New Development Paradigm: Papers on Institutions, NGOs, Gender and Local Government (1999), and Pakistan’s Economic and Social Development: The Domestic, Regional and Global Context (2004).

His more recent books include Issues in Pakistan’s Economy: A Political Economy Perspective published by Oxford University Press in 2015, and a co-edited volume entitled New Perspectives on Pakistan's Political Economy: State, Class and Social Change, published by Cambridge University Press in April 2019. He has a forthcoming book entitled Making Muslims: Reading Publics and Contesting Identities in 19th Century north India, to be published by Cambridge University Press, 2020.