Professor Pritam Singh, who was till recently a Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford, took his DPhil from Oriel College, University of Oxford where he was awarded the Edward Boyle/Charles Wallace Scholarship. He is now Professor Emeritus at Oxford Brookes Business School. Prof Singh was a Visiting Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2009, at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow in 2013, and at University of Uberlandia, Brazil in 2018.
He has published four single authored and three coedited books. The late Prof Ajit Singh of Cambridge University reviewing his book Federalism, Nationalism and Development: India and the Punjab Economy had remarked: ‘The book is one of those rare academic publications which has the potential to make history…’
Pritam Singh has published many refereed journal articles including in World Development, the most reputed international journal in development studies. He is on the editorial board of several journals including Capitalism Nature Socialism, and makes his contributions regularly on print, TV/Radio and online media. On an invitation from Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), India’s most reputed academic journal, he edited as a guest editor of its Special Punjab Issue in January 2017. His article ‘BJP’s Farming Policies: Deepening Agrobusiness Capitalism and Centralisation’ (EPW, Oct 10, 2020) was the first critical academic response to the three farm laws brought in by the BJP government. Different versions of this article were published in French and Spanish. He published many more academic journal articles, wrote in newspapers, gave public lectures, and appeared in TV/Radio interviews in many countries in support of the farmers struggle against the anti-farmers laws. He argued unsuccessfully with the leadership of the farmers movement to jointly contest elections to the Punjab State Assembly, and supported the section of the farmers movement which fought these elections under the banner of Samyukt Samaj Morcha (SSM).
His papers have been translated in French, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Korean and many Indian languages including Punjabi. Some of his papers translated in Tamil are coming out as a book later this year.
In June 2015, he was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award in Political Economy For The Twenty-First Century by the World Association of Political Economy in Johannesburg, and in May 2021, the University of California (Riverside) honoured him with ‘a Lifetime Achievement Award for his distinguished contribution to the Punjab Research Group in the UK to promote Sikh and Punjab Studies’.