Anwesha Chakraborty

Bio

Anwesha Chakraborty is an interdisciplinary social science researcher whose work lies at the intersection of anti-corruption, digital governance, and information integrity. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Urbino, contributing to the EU-funded vera.ai project on combating online disinformation. Previously, as Research Fellow at the University of Bologna, she was part of the ERC project BIT-ACT, where she investigated how grassroots civic-tech platforms and civil society initiatives in India and Bangladesh use ICTs to fight corruption, enhance transparency in public offices, and strengthen democratic participation. She has published widely on grassroots anti-corruption technologies, information integrity, e-governance, and transparency in public service delivery.

Alongside her research, Anwesha teaches qualitative methods in corruption studies, lectures internationally on digital governance and civic engagement, and has served on the organizing committees of the 2024 and 2025 Interdisciplinary Corruption Research (ICR) Forums, acting as Lead Coordinator for the 2025 Vienna Forum. Her work combines empirical field research with theoretical insight to explore how ICTs can be designed and mobilized as effective anti-corruption tools.

Publications

Giglietto, F., Terenzi, M., Chakraborty, A., & Marino, G. (forthcoming). Synthetic Seduction: Evolving Visual Persuasion in Coordinated Online Gambling Promotion with Generative AI. In S. Papadopoulos, K. Bontcheva, V. Mezaris, & R. Rogers (Eds.), Countering Disinformation in the Era of Generative AI. Springer.

Chakraborty, A., Mattoni, A. & Odilla, F. (forthcoming). Civil society efforts and actions against corruption in the digital age. In P. Heywood, I. Kubbe & A. Schwickerath (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Political Corruption. London : Routledge.

Kubbe, I. & Chakraborty, A. (forthcoming). Addressing Corruption in Humanitarian Assistance from a Research Perspective: Challenges, Consequences and Anti-Corruption Strategies. In M. Johnston (ed.) The Handbook of Research Methods for Corruption Studies. Edward Elgar.

Chakraborty, A. and Kubbe, I. (2024) Improving transparency in service delivery to fight corruption? Mapping multi-stakeholder voices on digitisation in the Indian public healthcare sector. American Behavioral Scientist. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268555

Chakraborty, A. (2024). Curbing electoral corruption: two South Asian civil society efforts to build robust democracies. In Marcelo Sili et al (eds) Exploring hope. Case Studies of Innovation, Change and Development in the Global South, p.39-44. Leeds: Emerald Publishing.

Chakraborty, A. (2024). Potentialities and Affordances of Grassroots Civic-tech Platforms as Effective Anti-corruption Tools: decoding the story of I Paid A Bribe, India. In Alice Mattoni (ed.). Digital Media and Grassroots Anti-Corruption: Contexts, Platforms and Practices of Anti-Corruption Technologies Worldwide. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Chakraborty, A. and Mattoni, A. (2023). Addressing Corruption through Visual Tools in India: the case of three civil society initiatives and their Facebook pages. Visual Studies, ahead of print.

Chakraborty, A., & Mattoni, A. (2023). Social Media Outrage against Fake COVID Tests: Decoding an instance of flash activism in Bangladesh. Sociologica, 17(1), 77–89.

Mattoni, A. and Chakraborty, A. (2023). Visual Memory in Grassroots Mobilizations: The case of the anti-corruption movement of 2011 in India. In Ann Rigney and Thomas Smits (eds.), The Visual Memory of Protest, pp.159-180. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Media outreach

Odilla, F and Chakraborty, A. (2021). ‘Anti-Corruption Technologies in Brazil and India’. Kickback: the global anti-corruption podcast, Episode 61. Podcast can be accessed here: https://soundcloud.com/kickback-gap/61-fernanda-odilla-anwesha-chakraborty-on-anti-corruption-technologies-in-brazil-and-india

Teaching

Adjunct Lecturer at Central Asian Research Institute on Corruption and Money Laundering, Bishkek. December 2024 – February 2025.

Responsible for preparing lesson plans, lecturing and grading for an online course titled ‘Qualitative methods in corruption research’.

Other services to the anti-corruption community

Member of the core organization committee of the 2024 and 2025 annual conferences of the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (network consists of young researchers in the field of anti-corruption). Part of the general management, grant-writing, evaluation and program committees.

Regions of expertise

Global, Asia, Europe and Central Asia