I'm an Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. Combining ethnographic and archival work, my research explores the relationship between commerce and sovereignty in the south Asian borderlands. More broadly, I work on questions of political economy, frontiers and mobility, militarization, the environment and spatial history.

My forthcoming book, Frontier Signatures (under contract with Stanford University Press) traces entanglements of trade and politics drawing on ethnography in the Kashmir region. Supported by the Wenner-Gren Hunt Fellowship, it shows how political economies in frontier spaces map out transnational trade networks and produce ideas of sovereignty distinct from those realised in the nation state. My second project, funded by the NWO-XS (2026) seed grant, explores human-planetary relations in Ladakh, with a specific focus on outer space research, citizen-scientific collaborations, astrotourism and the commodification of the night sky.

Before joining Utrecht University, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, and have taught at Ashoka and Johns Hopkins Universities. I received my Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University, and my MA in Sociology and BA in English (Hons) from Delhi University.

I believe that research and teaching in anthropology are inseparable, and I'm delighted to be voted Best Lecturer in the BA program by the student association Djembé now three years in a row (2024, 2025, 2026). I am an associate editor with the journal Conflict and Society.

Research and teaching interests:

Economic and political anthropology, frontiers, borderlands, political ecology, STS, ethnicity and nationalism, financial regulation and surveillance,  Islam and ethics, material cultures, militarization, the environment, feminist perspectives on space and society, archives and anthropology.