| Office | NAH 322 |
|---|---|
| Office Tel. | 3943 7676 |
| loading... | |
| Educational qualification | Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, USA M.A., University of Hyderabad, India B.A. (“Specialty”), Russian State University for the Humanities, Russia |
Introduction
I am a cultural anthropologist who is interested in the articulations and experiences of belonging in two distinct contexts: alternative medicine in India and the transnational lives of Indians in Hong Kong. In my doctoral research, I attempted to understand how people’s practices of maintaining health in India were linked to their sense of cultural, religious, and national identity. I did so by interviewing doctors and patients, as well as analyzing government medical policies and the commercialization of alternative medical products. I was intrigued to see both the hierarchical divisions and mutual entanglements of Ayurveda, Unani, Homeopathy, and other forms of alternative medicine. This work has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Andrew Mellon Foundation and has appeared in Medical Anthropology; Asian Medicine; Food, Culture, and Society; and Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology, among others.
My current project, funded by the Direct Grants for Research in 2020 and 2021, attempts to understand diverse experiences of belonging among Indians in Hong Kong. Specifically, I explore the journeys and stories of Indians who call themselves Hongkongers and Indians who view themselves as “expats” (as well as those who claim to be both or neither). I show how their work, institutional encounters, and personal life are shaped by the unique intersections of gender, race, citizenship, and class.
Research interests
Anthropology of India and Indian diaspora, identity, nationalism, migration, alternative medicine, healthy food, and gender.
Courses taught
At CUHK
ANTH 2111 Contemporary Anthropological Theory
ANTH 2310 / UGEC Gender and Culture
ANTH 3324 / ANTH 5324 Indian Culture and Society
ANTH 3630 / ANTH 5631 Language, Symbols and Society
ANTH 6010 Seminars in Anthropological Theory
Outside CUHK
ANTH 101 Introduction to Anthropology, Savannah College of Arts and Design
ANTH 1738 Gender Perspectives in Anthropology (undergraduate seminar), University of Pittsburgh
ANTH 1797 / RELSTU 1517 Mountains, Medical Systems, and Health, “Pitt in the Himalayas” Study Abroad Program, India
ANTH 1752 Anthropology of Food, University of Pittsburgh
Current research
Transnational lives, identities, and mobilities of Indians in Hong Kong
Awards and grants
2021 Direct Grant for Research, Chinese University of Hong Kong. “‘I am not an expat, I am brown’: Racialized Subjectivities of High-earning Mobile Professionals from India in Hong Kong”
2020 Direct Grant for Research, Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Multiple Belonging and Acts of Citizenship among Indians in Hong Kong”
2017 Best Graduate Student Paper Award, from The Science and Medicine in South Asia (SMSA) Special Interest group of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), American Anthropological Association (AAA).
2017 Arts and Sciences Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh
2016 Best Graduate Student Paper Prize, from The Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Integrative Medicine (CAM/IM) Special Interest group of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), American Anthropological Association (AAA).
2015 Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, The Wenner-Gren Foundation, Gr. # 9093
2014 Social Science Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh
2014 Summer Research Grant, University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh
2013 Summer Research Grant, Asian Studies Center: Indo-Pacific Council, University of Pittsburgh
2013 Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh
2012 Summer Research Grant, University Center for International Studies and The Asian Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh
2011 Arts and Sciences Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh
2010 University Medal for Academic Excellence, University of Hyderabad, India
2008 General Cultural Scholarship, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Government of India
2008 Golden Medal for Academic Excellence, Russian State University for the Humanities, Russia
Membership
American Anthropological Association (Society for Cultural Anthropology, Society for Medical Anthropology, Society for Feminist Anthropology)
Medical Anthropology Young Scholars
Association of Medical Anthropology Russia
Hong Kong Anthropological Society
| 2021 | Medical pluralism. In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (eds) F. Stein, S. Lazar, M. Candea, H. Diemberger, J. Robbins, A. Sanchez & R. Stasch. http://doi.org/10.29164/21medplural |
| 2020 | Khalikova, VR, Jin, M, Chopra, SS. Gender in Sustainability Research: Inclusion, Intersectionality, and Patterns of Knowledge Production. J Ind Ecol. 2020; 1– 13. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13095 |
| 2020 | A Local Genie in an Imported Bottle: Ayurvedic Commodities and Healthy Eating in North India. In Food, Culture, and Society DOI:10.1080/15528014.2020.1713429 |
| 2019 | Doctors of Plural Medicine, Knowledge Transmission, and Family Space in India. In Medical Anthropology, 10.1080/01459740.2019.1656621 |
| 2018 | Medicine and the Cultural Politics of National Belonging in Contemporary India: Medical Plurality or Ayurvedic Hegemony? In Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, Special Issue: Indian Medical Traditions between State and Village: Representations, Encounters, Legitimizations, Exclusions. |
| 2017 | The Ayurveda of Baba Ramdev: Biomoral Consumerism, National Duty, and the Biopolitics of ‘Homegrown’ Medicine in India. In South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 40(1): 105–122. |
| 2009 | The World around the Extreme Sports Bicycle. In Youth Subcultures of Moscow, ed. Gromov, pp. 253–296 (in Russian) |
| 2008 | Ethnosocial Environment and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Bulava village, Ulchski district, Khabarovski krai. In RSUH Student Field Research, Vol. 3, pp. 60–76 (in Russian) |
| 2007 | Ethno-National Identity of Children and Teenagers of Bessarabian Bulgarians in Ukraine. RSUH Student Field Research, Vol. 2, pp. 30–39 (in Russian) |
| 2019 | Theresia Hofer. Medicine and Memory in Tibet: Amchi Physicians in an Age of Reform. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018, 286 pp. (pbk). In Asian Anthropology DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2019.1583084 |
| 2017 | Commitment, Citation, and Context: An interview with Bharat Jayram Venkat. Cultural Anthropology, August 11 (co-authored with Ned Dostaler) |
| 2017 | Teaching with Digital Technologies: In-Class Applications. Cultural Anthropology, June 2 |
| 2017 | Teaching with Digital Technologies: An Introduction to a Series of posts. Cultural Anthropology, April 24. |
| 2016 | Book review: Naraindas, Harish, Johannes Quack, and William S. Sax (eds.) 2014. Asymmetrical Conversations: Contestations, Circumventions, and the Blurring of Therapeutic Boundaries. Berghahn Books. In Social Anthropology, 24(2), pp. 269–270 |
| 2016 | The Chemical Refrain, an #AmAnthro Panel Review for Cultural Anthropology |
| 2014 | Book review: Lock, Margaret and V-K Nguyen. 2010. An Anthropology of Biomedicine. In Medical Anthropology and Bioethics, Vol. 7 (in Russian and English) |
| 2019 | Healthy Food, Taste and Identity: Thinking About the Transformation of Ayurveda in a Globalized India. At the Hong Kong Anthropological Society, March 22. |
| 2018 | Strengthening the Body and the Nation through Traditional Medicine and Biomoral Consumption in India. At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, March 2. |
| 2017 | “Plural Medicine and Nationalism in Contemporary India.” At Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, USA. April 12 |
| 2016 | “Medical Systems in Anthropological Theory and Indian Politics.” Invited lecture at Centre for Medical Anthropology, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, June 21 |
| 2015 | “Language, Politics, and the Hierarchy of Institutionalized Plural Medicine in North India.” At Center for Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India, April 21 |
| 2020 | (conference canceled) Co-organizer: “Practices of Citizenship and Belonging among ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Asian Migrants.” At the Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, March, Boston. |
| 2017 | Chair: “Patients and Healers in South Asia: New Epistemologies, Professional Dilemmas, and Responses to Modernity”. At the 46th Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin Madison, October 28 |
| 2016 | Chair and co-organizer: Rethinking Gender Normativity, Sexuality, and Morality through Non-Biomedical Epistemologies. The Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Minneapolis, November 16–20 |
| 2016 | Organizer: “Successful Grant Writing” Workshop for Social Science Researchers. At the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, August 18 |
| 2019 | “Alternative Health Commodities and the Discourse of Trust in India.” At the AAA 2019, Vancouver. |
| 2018 | “Pursuing Health and Belonging through Biomoral Consumption: A Case of the Ayurvedic Industry in Contemporary India.” At the workshop TransAsian Connections. Theme: States of Fortification: Connecting Asia through Technologies of Food and Health, organized by SSRC. December 2018, Hanoi |
| 2018 | “Organic or Ayurvedic? Entangled Ideologies of Health, Class, and Cultural Identity in Contemporary India.” At the Workshop: Transecting Healthy and Sustainable Food in the Asia-Pacific, Yale-NUS Singapore, July 30-August 2 |
| 2017 | Doctors and “Medical Houses:” Family-based Medical Pluralism in Contemporary India. The 46th Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin Madison, Oct 28 |
| 2017 | Gender in Policy and Design for Sustainable and Resilient Communities. At the joint meeting of The International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) and the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST), Chicago, IL, USA, June 25-29 |
| 2017 | Community, Gender, and Life Course: Sustainability for Whom? At the Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Santa Fe, March 28–April 1 |
| 2016 | Yoga, Herbs, and ‘Homosexuality Cures’: Approaching Sexual and Gender Difference in Indian Medicine, at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Minnesota, USA, November 16–20. |
| 2016 | Therapeutic Plurality, Ayurvedic Hegemony and the Cultural Politics of Nationalism in North India, at the workshop Indian medicine: Between state and village, organized by the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden, the Netherlands, June 23–24 |
| 2015 | Rhetoric, Rituals, and the Biopolitics of a ‘Homegrown’ Medicine in India. American Anthropological Association Meeting, Denver, USA, November 18–22 |
| 2015 | “Muslim” Unani and “Global” Ayurveda: Convergence and Disparity of Two Medical Traditions in India. At The Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies, Pittsburgh, USA, October 9–11 |
| 2015 | Medicinal Plants Discourse: Seeking and Selling Health in the Indian Himalayas. At 7th Annual Anthropology Postgraduate Student Forum, “Impacting the World: Emerging Voices of Asian Anthropology”, Chinese University of Hong Kong, January 23–24 |
| 2013 | Medical Ideologies and Negotiated Treatment in the Context of Structured Medical Pluralism in North India. At Joint International Conference by EASA Medical Anthropology Network, AAA Society for Medical Anthropology, and Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain, June 12–14 |
| 2013 | Research on Medical Pluralism in the 21st century, or Ubiquitous Questions of Ethics, Methods, and Funding. At the 4th Annual Meeting, Medical Anthropology Young Scholars, Spain, June 10–11 |
| 2007 | Ethnosocial Environment in Bulava village, Khabarovsky district. At the Russian Student Conference, RSUH, Moscow, Russia, December |
| 2007 | Bulgarian Diaspora in Ukraine. At the Congress of Young Scholars, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, November |
| 2006 | Co-presenter (with Valentina Chubarova) Ethnic Stereotypes and Inter-Ethnical Relations in Krinichnoe village, Ukraine. At the Russian-Ukrainian Student Conference, RSUH, Moscow, Russia |