Dr. Rahul S. Sapkal is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He holds a PhD in Law and Economics from the European Doctorate Programme in Law and Economics, jointly affiliated with Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands; the University of Bologna, Italy; and the University of Hamburg, Germany.

His teaching and research are located within the interdisciplinary fields of labour law and governance, informal economy, segmented labour-market analysis, public policy design, platform and care economy, applied econometrics, law and economics, social policy, and welfare policy design. His work brings an intersectional perspective to the study of labour markets, examining how existing social, economic and spatial structures shape unequal outcomes for socio-economically and spatially marginalised groups in the Global South.

Before joining IIT Bombay, Dr. Sapkal worked as an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Labour Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and at National Law University Mumbai. He was recently awarded the Second Best Young Scholar Research Paper Award, carrying a research grant of USD 8,000, by WINIR at the European Law and Economics Association Conference held at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, on 20 September 2024. He also received the Prof. Rudar Dutta Young Labour Economist Award at the 64th Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics, held at the University of Hyderabad on 31 March 2024.

Dr. Sapkal is also the recipient of the Faculty Research Fellowship 2017 from the Reserve Bank of India, the Azim Premji Research Foundation Grant for the academic year 2018–19, and the IMPRESS-ICSSR Major Research Grant 2019–20. He has been associated as a Visiting Research Fellow with the Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany.

He is an expert-nominated member of the Drafting Committee for Indian Labour Standards on “Leveraging the Human Capital of Brick Kiln Workers” under the Social Responsibility Sectional Committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards and the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India. He has also led large-scale research studies, including “Workers in the Time of COVID-19” on pandemic-affected stranded migrant workers, and “In Defence of Living Wage: Evidence from Tea Plantation Workers in Assam,” undertaken for ActionAid India and Oxfam India, respectively, in 2021.

Dr. Sapkal has initiated collaboration with the UN Global Compact Living Wage Simulation Lab. He has published widely in leading international journals, edited volumes, policy briefs and public policy platforms.