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 book manuscript Frontier Signatures (currently under review) 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 explores human-planetary relations in Ladakh, with a specific focus on outer space research, citizen-scientic 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.

Research and teaching interests:

Economic and political anthropology, borderlands, trans-Himalayan trade, 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, South Asia.