Avinash Jha joined CSDS as a Consultant to the Library in 2003 and oversaw the automation of the library system. In 2005, he joined the Centre as librarian. Before joining CSDS, he worked for many years in the Centre for Education and Documentation (CED) in Mumbai, where he was involved in developing open and democratic information systems.

He is author of a book Background to Globalisation (Mumbai, 2000), which is a prescribed or recommended text for several post-graduate departments of sociology, politics and law. The concluding chapter of the book has been anthologized for a book of readings for the Kerala University literature students called Meeting the World: Writings on Contemporary Issues (Pearson Education, 2013).

Since his days as a student of physics, he has been interested in philosophical issues concerning knowledge and is currently engaged in research concerning normative structures of knowledge and information and Buddhist philosophy of perception. He is associated with a group of people developing a new perspective on knowledge and politics known by the name of Lokavidya (www.vidyaashram.org). Some of his writings are included in the recently published anthology Lokavidya Perspectives: A Philosophy of Political Imagination for the Knowledge Age (Aakar Books, 2015).

His conference presentations and publications include:

‘Sciences and Society: What Kind of Mediation?’, Economic and Political Weekly, February 7, 2004, p. 538-540.

‘Configuring Knowledge: An Essay on Knowledge in the Information Age’, E-Learning, Issue 3, Volume 3, 2006, p. 434-447.

‘Memoirs of Information Work’, Paper presented at the International Colloquium on Information, Society, Politics, History titled ‘Sensor-Census-Censor: Investigating Regimes of Information, Registering Changes of State’ at Sarai-CSDS, New Delhi, India, 30 November-1 December 2006.

'Science as Pramana Sastra: Reflections on Science and the Order of Knowledge’,Paper presented at the seminar ‘European and Non-European Paradigms’, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, 18-19 January 2007.

‘Internet and the Shifting Grounds of Knowledge’, Paper presented at the Conference on the Emerging Organisation of  Knowledge and the Future of  Universities, December 2008, Jamia Millia Islamia, 32nd Indian Social Science Congress.

'मुक्तिगामी फिलॉलजी और ज्ञान परम्पराएः शब्दार्थ विज्ञान के सिलसिले में शेल्डन पोलॉक से एक बहस', प्रतिमान, जनवरी-जून 2014, 312-325.