Nirmala Rao

Nirmala Rao, OBE, FAcSS (born 1959) is a British political scientist and academic administrator. She currently serves as the Vice-Chancellor of Krea University in Andhra Pradesh, India. She previously served as the Vice-Chancellor of the Asian University for Women (AUW) in Chittagong, Bangladesh (2017–2022), as Pro-Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London (2008–2017), Her research focuses on local politics and comparative urban governance, and she has held several public advisory roles in the UK, including as an academic advisor to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). She completed her secondary education at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Chennai and attended Delhi University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Economics with Statistics in 1979.

Academic career and leadership roles Rao’s early career in the UK involved research and policy analysis. From 1987 to 1989, she served as a research fellow for the Runnymede Trust, where she authored the report Black Women in Public Housing (1990). She then held Research Fellowships at the Policy Studies Institute (1989–1991) and published several reports including The Changing Role of Local Housing Authorities (1990), Educational Change and Local Government: The Impact of the Education Reform Act (1990), and From Providing to Enabling: Local Authorities and Community Care Planning (1991).

Rao was subsequently appointed as a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Political Studies at Queen Mary and Westfield College (1991–1994), University of London, during which time she published Managing Change: Councillors and the New Local Government (with Ken Young) and Competition, Contracts and Change: The Local Authority Experience of CCT (1995).

In 1994, Rao joined Goldsmiths, University of London as a Lecturer in Politics.

In July 2022, Rao assumed the office of Vice-Chancellor at the newly established Krea University in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh.

Public service Rao has held various appointments on public bodies and regulatory boards in the United Kingdom and India:

Architects Registration Board (ARB): Appointed Member (2003–2009).

Scholarship Her research focuses on urban governance, local democracy, and public administration.

Personal life Rao is married to Dr. Guduru Gopal Rao, a consultant microbiologist, who was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2009 for services to medicine.