Oportunius Research Professor, University of Santiago de Compostela, since 2021. Taught at Edinburgh University 2009-2021; Junior Research Fellow, Jesus College, Cambridge, 2006-2009.
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Socio-cultural anthropologist working in the areas of medical, linguistic and religious anthropology, and South Asian studies more broadly.
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Anthropology degrees: PhD, University of Cambridge, 2007; MPhil (by Research), University of Cambridge, 2003; Masters (taught), University of Cambridge, 2002.
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My most recent monograph Hematologies: The Political Life of Blood in India (Cornell U. P. 2019 - Open Access), co-authored with Dwaipayan Banerjee, explores the relation between blood’s utopian flows and political clottings as it moves through time and space, conjuring new kinds of social collectivities while re-animating older forms, seeking, through a focus on substantial-political flows, to develop a new approach to Indian political life. My first monograph - Veins of Devotion: Blood Donation and Religious Experience in North India – was published in 2009 (Open Access). Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, the book combined medical and religious anthropology to index how new forms of devotional worship enable and produce the contexts of mass biological transfers.
I am currently working on two joint monographs (with members of the ROSA-ERC and Leverhulme Trust-Gurus and Media teams - see Research): one on contested non-religion in South Asia, and another on non-religion and Hindu nationalism in India.
I continue to work on names and naming practices in India (representative essays here and here), and on (mainly religious) gurus and guruship (e.g. essays here and here), and retain a particular interest in the social lives and theologies of Sikhism and Hinduism.
My most recent co-edited books - both Open Access - were published in Autumn 2023 : (1) Gurus and Media: Sound, image, machine, text and the digital, and (2) An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange: Interactions, Transactions and Ethics in Asia and Beyond.
My other edited collections include the first major treatment of relations between non-religion and media (Global Sceptical Publics: From Nonreligious Print Media to ‘Digital Atheism’, 2022, with Mascha Schulz - Open Access); consideration of the social life of fakes (Fake: Anthropological Keywords, 2018, with Giovanni da Col - Open Access), global socialities of blood donation and transfusion (Blood Donation, Bioeconomy, Culture, 2009) and the social implications of various modes of biological exchange in South Asia (South Asian Tissue Economies, 2013 - journal special issue here, also published as a book here); modes and varieties of the guru (The Guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2012, with Aya Ikegame - available Open Access); Strathernian social theory (Social Theory after Strathern, 2014, with Alice Street - journal special issue here); and names and naming practices (On Names in South Asia: Iteration, (Im)propriety and Dissimulation, 2015, with Veena Das - available Open Access).
A full list of publications is here, and many essays are free to download here.
I have held visiting fellowships at Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka), Le Centre d'Études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud (Paris) funded by a Caledonian Research Foundation/Royal Society of Edinburgh European Visiting Research Fellowship award, India’s National Law University (New Delhi) and The Open University.
I serve on the editorial boards of the journals Contemporary South Asia and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory and previously was on the board of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
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Socio-cultural anthropologist working in the areas of medical, linguistic and religious anthropology, and South Asian studies more broadly.
~
Anthropology degrees: PhD, University of Cambridge, 2007; MPhil (by Research), University of Cambridge, 2003; Masters (taught), University of Cambridge, 2002.
~
My most recent monograph Hematologies: The Political Life of Blood in India (Cornell U. P. 2019 - Open Access), co-authored with Dwaipayan Banerjee, explores the relation between blood’s utopian flows and political clottings as it moves through time and space, conjuring new kinds of social collectivities while re-animating older forms, seeking, through a focus on substantial-political flows, to develop a new approach to Indian political life. My first monograph - Veins of Devotion: Blood Donation and Religious Experience in North India – was published in 2009 (Open Access). Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, the book combined medical and religious anthropology to index how new forms of devotional worship enable and produce the contexts of mass biological transfers.
I am currently working on two joint monographs (with members of the ROSA-ERC and Leverhulme Trust-Gurus and Media teams - see Research): one on contested non-religion in South Asia, and another on non-religion and Hindu nationalism in India.
I continue to work on names and naming practices in India (representative essays here and here), and on (mainly religious) gurus and guruship (e.g. essays here and here), and retain a particular interest in the social lives and theologies of Sikhism and Hinduism.
My most recent co-edited books - both Open Access - were published in Autumn 2023 : (1) Gurus and Media: Sound, image, machine, text and the digital, and (2) An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange: Interactions, Transactions and Ethics in Asia and Beyond.
My other edited collections include the first major treatment of relations between non-religion and media (Global Sceptical Publics: From Nonreligious Print Media to ‘Digital Atheism’, 2022, with Mascha Schulz - Open Access); consideration of the social life of fakes (Fake: Anthropological Keywords, 2018, with Giovanni da Col - Open Access), global socialities of blood donation and transfusion (Blood Donation, Bioeconomy, Culture, 2009) and the social implications of various modes of biological exchange in South Asia (South Asian Tissue Economies, 2013 - journal special issue here, also published as a book here); modes and varieties of the guru (The Guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2012, with Aya Ikegame - available Open Access); Strathernian social theory (Social Theory after Strathern, 2014, with Alice Street - journal special issue here); and names and naming practices (On Names in South Asia: Iteration, (Im)propriety and Dissimulation, 2015, with Veena Das - available Open Access).
A full list of publications is here, and many essays are free to download here.
I have held visiting fellowships at Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka), Le Centre d'Études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud (Paris) funded by a Caledonian Research Foundation/Royal Society of Edinburgh European Visiting Research Fellowship award, India’s National Law University (New Delhi) and The Open University.
I serve on the editorial boards of the journals Contemporary South Asia and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory and previously was on the board of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.