Research Interests

I am a sociocultural anthropologist working across queer anthropology, South Asian Studies, and “otherwise anthropology”—or an anthropology of the political, social, ethical, and aesthetic possibilities that emerge from ongoing structural violence, precarity, and crisis. Across each of these broad domains, my research and teaching center the thresholds between pleasure and violence; wherein I ask how gender, sexual, and racial minorities experience and endure myriad forms of violence while simultaneously enacting new possibilities and futures. My goal as an anthropologist is to identify and name different formations of social exclusion as well as to illuminate the potential futures and creative strategies enacted by sexual, gender, and racial minorities living in India and the United States to navigate exclusion. I approach these research methods by combining traditional ethnographic methods like participant observation, in-depth interviewing, archival methods, and textual analysis with newer methods like digital ethnography, social media analysis, and participant observation in online communities. Use this space to read more about my ongoing research projects.