About Me
I am currently Assistant Professor of Sociology and South Asian Studies at National University of Singapore. I have a joint appointment as Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Yale NUS College. I have a PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago, and a MA in Development Studies from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
As a qualitative sociologist by training, my aspirations and inspirations as a researcher are motivated by a commitment to critically thinking through the seemingly banal “everyday”. I use an ethnographic sensibility to explore how new technologies of social control in rapidly urbanizing India are enmeshed in gender and class politics.
In my academic research, I have examined state-citizen relations through the lens of road safety; the politics of women’s safety in taxicabs in Hyderabad; the impact of COVID-19 on migrant cabdrivers; the historical evolution of middle-class attitudes towards public kissing in Mumbai; how ideologies of good citizenship are embodied in gendered consumption practices at wellness centers in Chennai; the intersectional exclusions of in-vitro fertilization technologies; and the politics of honor killings in India. This work has appeared in Area, Social Problems, Social Change, Journal of Historical Sociology, the Journal of Consumer Culture, the Journal of Developing Societies, and Economic and Political Weekly. In my public writing, I have written about ethnographic research as a gendered and sexualized practice; how women drivers in Hyderabad “have fun” in the highly masculinized profession of autorickshaw driving; how upper-class women travel in taxicabs in the context of panics around women’s safety in cabs; the possibilities and pleasures of women using Instagram; and on youth masculinities in small towns in neoliberalizing India. Some of this writing can be found on Public Books, Economic and Political Weekly, Agents of Ishq, StandArt, and The Wire. Find my writing here.
Teaching has been integral to my growth as a scholar and researcher. The courses I teach — and have taught — at National University of Singapore, Yale-NUS College, and at the University of Chicago have contributed immensely to my own research and intellectual development. I have taught undergraduate courses such as “Issues in State and Society”, “Gender in the City”, “Urban Theory”, “Gender in South Asia”, “Modern Social Theory”, “Self, Culture, and Society” and “Digital Ethnography”. I have also given guest lectures in courses on transportation, qualitative methods, and gender studies.
I have also advised undergraduate and graduate students at both Yale-NUS College and NUS. I have supervised honors thesis with topics ranging from gender and urban infrastructure to memory and urban planning to thermal inequality. I am also currently supervising a doctoral thesis on gender and environmental crisis, have examined a PhD thesis on disability and Indian cinema, and have served on the dissertation proposal committees at NUS, University of Nevada-Reno, and Rutgers University.
I believe in doing the work of making academic writing accessible to a wider public. In that sense, I think of myself as doing the work of intellectual translation. To this end, not only have I published several book reviews but I also am a regular host on the New Books Network podcast. In my tryst with research, doing the work of public writing and intellectual translation has been the most satisfying and rewarding experience.
I am also the co-founder and co-editor of Ethnographic Marginalia, a website that features writing and conversations around ethnographic practice.
For more, visit www. ethnomarginalia.com