Research interests:
Sand and sediment, social movements, coastal commons, land use, architectural practices, anthropology of value
Research area(s):
South Asia, India, Goa
Profile
I am a social anthropologist with a research focus on environmental and urban governance in India. I aim to address questions around the future of coastal commons and shifting valuation regimes of extractive sand economies in port cities. As part of the Emmy Noether research group, ‘S.AND — the future of coastal cities in the Indian Ocean’, I am interested in the social, political and environmental role of sand in the ever-shifting coastlines of the Afrasian Sea.
My current ethnographic project focuses on the movement of silt, sand and sediment on Goan waterfronts to examine processes of extraction beyond large-scale sites of mining. In addition to analysing state efforts of dealing with silt build-up and river sand mining, I work with a number of oceanographers, engineers and architects who interact with earthly matter in various scientific capacities.
As part of my master thesis, I examined timber circulation in Himachal Pradesh, India, through an analysis of join forestry efforts and vocabularies for timber use in state policies. Building off literature on informal economies and mafias, the thesis looked at the movements of a material which straddles realms of live and non-live commodities. It also explored questions of class aesthetics and design in how the liveness of timber is placed within architectural decisions.