Jadavpur is a neighbourhood of Southern Kolkata in Kolkata district in West Bengal, India. It is one of the important junctions in South Kolkata. Jadavpur University and a number of research institutes of national and international importance are located here.

Jadavpur was named after Late Jadav Narayan Sarkar, zamindar of Sonarpur.^{[citation needed]}

In 1862, "the Calcutta and South-Eastern Railway opened a line south-ward from what was then called Beliaghata Station to Port Canning." The line (now part of Sealdah South lines) passes through Jadavpur.

In 1876, Dr. Mahendra Lal Sarkar, established the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, an institution for fundamental research in basic sciences, at Jadavpur, as an entirely private effort. Sir C. V. Raman carried out ground-breaking work in the field of light scattering in this institute and it was first published by the institute in the Indian Journal of Physics. It earned him the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics.

With donations from Raja Subodh Chandra Mullick, Brajendra Kishore Roychowdhury and others, the National Council of Education, set up the institutions at Jadavpur, in 1906, as a Swadeshi effort for the promotion of science and technology. The Bengal Technical Institute was "initially set up at Maniktala but soon moved to what was then the quiet suburban retreat of Jadavpur. Later, this became the College of Engineering and Technology, and finally in 1955, Jadavpur University. The progress of Jadavpur University from a technical institute to a diversified university with flourishing arts and science faculties, including several centres for advanced work in various areas, is perhaps the most significant and heartening development in Kolkata’s academic life since independence."

Jadavpur is home to two research institutes, under the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research – the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, established in 1935, and the Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute, established in 1950.

The Calcutta Municipal Corporation Act 1980, which came into effect in 1984, extended the boundaries of Kolkata by including South Suburban, Garden Reach and Jadavpur municipalities in Kolkata.

With the partition of Bengal in 1947, "millions of refugees poured in from erstwhile East Pakistan." In the initial stages bulk of the refugees were non-agriculturists. A few of them made their own arrangements, but "it was squatters who made the East Bengali refugees famous or infamous." Squatting (jabardakhal in Bengali) ranged from the forcible occupation of barracks to the collective take-over of private, government and waste land. "This happened as early as 1948 with middle class refugees in the Jadabpur area: first on government land and then on private property, leading to violent clashes. Having won the battle, the elated squatters named their colony ‘Bijaygarh’, the Fort of Victory." By 1949, there were 40 such colonies in Jadavpur, Kasba, Santoshpur, Garia and Behala, in the south-eastern part of the city, and 65 in the Dum Dum and Panihati zone in the north. Subsequently squatters colonies also came up along the west bank of the Hooghly and by 1950, there were 150 such colonies. "Their names – Surya Sen Nagar, Bapujinagar, Bidhanpally, Adarshanagar – reflected their creators’ memories of the past and hopes for the future." The squatters resorted to various strategies to gain legitimacy and government aid. A common practice was to invite leading personalities of Calcutta society to be the president of their refugee association. At one point of time Basanti Devi, then widow of Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, was president of the Jadavpur Refugee Camp Association for a short period. The efforts of the East Bengali refugees in rebuilding their lives, virtually with their own efforts, has been spoken of as "self-rehabilitation". To take just one example of their success: by 1952, Bijaygarh boasted of four schools, one college, a market, a post office, a temple and even a hospital. No doubt, Bijaygarh was a model for others to follow. Efforts have been made in more recent years to regularise land/property rights in the refugee colonies.