Poornima is a Lecturer in Comparative Political Economy at King's College London. Her work explores the changing history of social and economic inequality, with a particular focus on South Asia. She is currently undertaking a major new research project examining the role of data in economic governance in postcolonial India. 

Poornima holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University, an MA in History from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a BA in Ethics, Politics and Economics from Yale University. Drawing on her varied training, she believes strongly in the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of inequality, especially when it comes to recognizing and addressing the compounding overlaps between economic inequalities on the one hand and racialized and gendered hierarchies on the other.