Assa Doron's main areas of interest include, urban anthropology, development, environment & public health, media and technology. Much of his fieldwork was carried in Varanasi where he focused on the ritual economy of the river, a study that was published in the book, Life on the Ganga, (Cambridge, 2013). Doron's collaboration with Robin Jeffrey led to a book on the mobile phone revolution in India, titled, The Great Indian Phone Book (Harvard UP/C. Hurst, 2013). The book received wide media coverage in outlets such as, The Economist, Bloomberg, India Today, Times Higher Education, The Wall Street Journal, LA Review of Books, Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), LSE Review of Books, The Australian, and SMH as well as in various academic journals.

Doron & Jeffrey's prize winning book Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India (Harvard 2018), was widely covered in outlets including The Guardian, Times of India, Down to Earth and Quartz. The book was favourably reviewed in Nature, Times Literary Supplement, New Scientist, Public Books, LSERB, The Australian, and The Wire amongst others. Doron is currently working on questions to do with public health, environmental degradation and the crisis of antimicrobial resistance.

Assa Doron was also the Founding Director of the South Asia Research Institute at ANU until 2017.

Career highlights

2022 - Reid Prize (citation for Waste of a Nation); Asian Studies Assoc Australia

2020 - President’s Book Prize for 2018–19 (citation)

2019 - Awarded Australian Research Council Discovery Project

2013/4 – Awarded Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASAA) Early Career Research Prize

2012 - Awarded Australian Research Council Future Fellowship

2008 - Awarded Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship