Badri Narayan Tiwari (born 5 October 1965), is an Indian social historian and cultural anthropologist. [1] He serves as the Vice-Chancellor of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. [2] and is a former head and director of the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute. [2] He has been recognized as a Fellow of the Maison des Sciences de L'Homme, Paris, and has received the Fulbright Senior Fellowship (2004-05) and the Smuts Fellowship, University of Cambridge (2007). [3] He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award (2022) for Hindi for his poetry collection Tumdi Ke Shabd. [4] [5]
Badri Narayan Tiwari earned an MA and a PhD in Modern History from the University of Allahabad and later served as the head of the Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute of the University. [1] [2] According to The Times of India, as a director of the G. B. Pant Social Science Institute in Prayagraj, Tiwari established a Kumbh study centre and an ethnographic museum. [6] He also served as a professor at the Centre for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). [1] [7]
In July 2025, Prof. Tiwari was appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), becoming the first to be appointed under the Ministry of Education's new regulations. [2] [8]
Prof Tiwari is the first VC appointed at TISS under the University Grants Commission's (UGC) latest selection rules introduced in 2023.