I am an anthropologist of South Asia whose work examines questions of sexuality, gender and gender identity in relation to class, racialization, caste, and political economy in India. I am particularly interested in racial and caste capitalism, ethnographic theory, theories of space, and the history of the left and feminist movements in postcolonial worlds. I am an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass), where I am affiliated with the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Afro-American Studies, and the Asian American Studies Program. I also serve as a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and Development at the University of Pretoria, and am an Affiliated Researcher in the Centre for Gender Studies (SKOK) at the University of Bergen in Norway.
I earned my doctorate in Columbia University’s joint program in Anthropology and Public Health and, previously, a Master’s in Public Health degree from Emory University. I am an undergraduate alum of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Department of Anthropology.
My first monograph, Street Corner Secrets: Sex, Work and Migration in the City of Mumbai (Duke University Press, 2014) was an ethnography of sex work, migration, and urban informal economies in India. Its object was street-based solicitation done by cisgender Dalit and tribal women who navigated livelihoods through both day wage construction work and sex work. Extending theories of migration and the production of space, the book argues for an understanding sex work as an aspect of labor migration within informal economies, where this migration is mediated by the politics and production of state violence, casteism, livelihood insecurity, and struggles to access to potable water due to caste apartheid.
I am working on a second monograph, drawn from long term ethnography of radical social movements in India, including left, queer, transgender and autonomous feminist movements. The book, provisionally entitled Dissent in Queer Times, writes from seams of queer and transgender activism and politics that are embedded within both traditional and new left formations. It curates interviews, notes on travel, and the material culture of movement spaces to denote the geographic dispersal and highly networked array of movements that are engaged with queer, transgender and feminist struggle and critique throughout the country.
I am also engaged in collaborative writing and research projects with colleagues in the US, UK, India and South Africa. These include forthcoming special issues on questions of LGBTQI+ economics, and on the theme of ‘Queer and Trans World Anthropologies.’
I have presented my work and taught internationally. My work has been supported by the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Fulbright Foundation, Jawaharlal Nehru University, the University of Bergen, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.