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Swapan Dasupta was born in Calcutta in 1955 into a Bengali family of the Vaidya- brahmin community. His father, S.C. Dasgupta, was the Chairman of Calcutta Chemicals, a well-known pharmaceutical company started by his grandfather, the Late K.C. Das. His mother, Rekha, was the daughter of the successful barrister Sushil Chandra Sen, author of India's first Companies Act, and after whom a road is named (formerly Nandan Road) in the posh locality of South Calcutta. He was educated at La Martiniere College in Calcutta, where he was a contemporary of Chandan Mitra and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. He went on to do a BA degree in History at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, standing second in Delhi University. He then went on scholarship to complete his MA in History at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) as well as his PhD. His completed his thesis in 1980, entitled "Local politics in Bengal, Midnapur District".
In 1982 he was appointed Junior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, for which he received the INLAKS Scholarship.