Ajantha Subramanian

Ajantha Subramanian

Associate
Ajantha Subramanian

Research and Teaching Interests

Political Economy; Colonialism and Postcoloniality; Political Ecology; Space; Social Movements; Citizenship; South Asia; South Asian diaspora.

Ajantha Subramanian is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies and Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies at Harvard University. Her research interests include political economy, political ecology, colonialism and postcoloniality, space, citizenship, South Asia, and the South Asian diaspora. Her first book Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India (Stanford University Press, 2009), chronicles the struggles for resource rights by Catholic fishers on India’s southwestern coast, with a focus on how they have used spatial imaginaries and practices to constitute themselves as political subjects. Her second book, The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (Harvard University Press, 2019)tracks the relationship between meritocracy and democracy in India on order to understand the production of merit as a form of caste property and its implications for democratic transformation.

Curriculum Vitae

Contact Information

Tozzer Anthropology Building 210
21 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
Chair Business Contact:
anthrochair@fas.harvard.edu
(617) 495-5820
Peabody Museum 30A
p: (617) 496-9647