Shahid Majeed Dar

Shahid Majeed Dar currently serves as Assistant Professor at the School of Liberal Studies and Humanities, UPES. He recently completed his PhD in Economics from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He is currently working on women empowerment and child health in India using national-level representative data. His areas of interest include Applied Microeconomics, Health Economics, and Family Economics as primary areas, while his secondary interests include Impact Evaluation of Public Policies, Gender Economics, and Sanitation Economics.

Shahid brings valuable teaching experience from the various academic roles he undertook at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He served as a tutor for Economics of Banking and Financial Markets (NPTEL 2022–2024), where he supported online learners by clarifying complex concepts and facilitating discussions. In addition, he served as a tutor for Intermediate Macroeconomics at IIT Kanpur. He has also contributed significantly as a Teaching Assistant in several undergraduate and graduate-level courses at IIT Kanpur, assisting students in mastering the courses. These include Intermediate Microeconomics, Money and Banking, Macroeconomics-I, and Empirical Methods in Health Economics and Public Policy.

His research interests lie at the intersection of Development Economics, Health Economics, and Public Policy. He is particularly interested in understanding how individual behaviour responds to targeted policies designed to improve well-being in developing countries. Using large-scale micro-level datasets, including longitudinal surveys, he employs causal inference methods to uncover meaningful insights.

Shahid believes that education should be an active, immersive experience rather than a passive transfer of information. His teaching philosophy centres on bridging theory with practice, creating opportunities for students to apply what they learn in real-world contexts. He aims to cultivate not just subject knowledge, but curiosity, critical thinking, and the confidence to question assumptions. By encouraging analytical reasoning and collaborative problem-solving, he helps students move beyond rote learning to become independent thinkers and lifelong learners.

Shahid teaches courses pertaining to Economic Development and Basic Statistics.

• Shahid qualified the National Eligibility Test (NET) in 2018. 
• He received a travel grant award for the 15th Annual Congress by the International Health Economics Association (IHEA). 
• He was also awarded an Institute Fellowship for his Ph.D. during 2020–2024 at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. 

Shahid has attended and participated in various national and international conferences. These include the Second Biennial Conference on Development at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), the 57th Annual Conference of The Indian Econometric Society (TIES) at University of Hyderabad, the 7th Annual CECFEE Research and Policy Workshop at Indian Statistical Institute, the 15th Annual Congress of International Health Economics Association (IHEA) in Cape Town, the Winter School at Delhi School of Economics, the 6th Annual Economics Conference at Ahmedabad University, and the 2nd Meeting of Young Minds in Frontiers of Economics at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.

shahid.dar@ddn.upes.ac.in