Ishani Dasgupta is an Assistant Instructional Professor in the Social Science Division. She completed a joint PhD in Anthropology and South Asia Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been an Andrew W. Mellon HILLS Postdoctoral Scholar at Case Western Reserve University (2023) and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville (2022). Her research is based on fieldwork among Tibetan refugee settlements and communities in India, where she collaborated closely with grassroots political organizations and studied their culture of resistance. Her work has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the American Institute of Indian Studies.
Her publications are forthcoming in the Political and Legal Anthropological Review (POLAR) and Himalaya. Currently, she is converting her dissertation into a book titled "Refugee Nation." She remains committed to bringing refugee voices to the forefront of critical discussions about refugee policies and rehabilitation practices.
This event is presented within the Culture, Power, and Social Change (CPSC) Colloquium (UCLA Department of Anthropology) and co-sponsored by the UCLA Program on Central Asia and UCLA Center for India and South Asia.