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I am an independent social scientist based in India (M.Sc., D.Phil. in Sociology; Oxford University) and honorary member of the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg (formerly, Baden-Württemberg Fellow 2023-24).

I have worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in Sociology at Oxford University (also as tutor); Heidelberg University; University of Amsterdam; and the University of South Australia, and given invited talks at Harvard University, Leiden University, the Centre for Contemporary Indian Studies (Japan); the Hyderabad Literary Festival, among others. Formerly, I worked as a senior journalist at the Times of India in Ahmedabad, India, where I covered the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 in Gujarat for the newspaper.

I specialize in the study of collective violence with a focus on the spatial component of violence: how geographic space facilitates and hinders social relations and behaviour is integral to my research. My book, Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), employs statistical and ethnographic data to explain the sustenance of peace in some heterogeneous (Hindu-Muslim) towns, villages, and neighbourhoods during one of modern India’s worst episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002. The book has been lauded for its analysis, “the best synthesis in the literature on mass violence anywhere” (Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania); “an important contribution to the understanding of violent conflict and prospects for abating it” (Donald L. Horowitz, Duke University) and its methods, “an extraordinary dataset on killings and peace” (e.g. American Journal of Sociology).

My current research on violence examines male aggression and female social control: in a study spanning five Indian cities, I focus on veiling practices among Hindu and Muslim women.

I am an independent social scientist based in India (M.Sc., D.Phil. in Sociology; Oxford University) and honorary member of the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg (formerly, Baden-Württemberg Fellow 2023-24).

I have worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in Sociology at Oxford University (also as tutor); Heidelberg University; University of Amsterdam; and the University of South Australia, and given invited talks at Harvard University, Leiden University, the Centre for Contemporary Indian Studies (Japan); the Hyderabad Literary Festival, among others. Formerly, I worked as a senior journalist at the Times of India in Ahmedabad, India, where I covered the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 in Gujarat for the newspaper.

I specialize in the study of collective violence with a focus on the spatial component of violence: how geographic space facilitates and hinders social relations and behaviour is integral to my research. My book, Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), employs statistical and ethnographic data to explain the sustenance of peace in some heterogeneous (Hindu-Muslim) towns, villages, and neighbourhoods during one of modern India’s worst episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002. The book has been lauded for its analysis, “the best synthesis in the literature on mass violence anywhere” (Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania); “an important contribution to the understanding of violent conflict and prospects for abating it” (Donald L. Horowitz, Duke University) and its methods, “an extraordinary dataset on killings and peace” (e.g. American Journal of Sociology).

My current research on violence examines male aggression and female social control: in a study spanning five Indian cities, I focus on veiling practices among Hindu and Muslim women.