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I am an independent social scientist based in India, with an M.Sc. and a D.Phil. in Sociology from the University of Oxford. I am currently a Baden-Wurttemberg Fellow at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg. I have worked as a research fellow and tutor at Oxford in the Department of Sociology and Nuffield College; the University of Amsterdam; the University of South Australia; and, IIIT-Hyderabad. Formerly, I worked as a senior journalist at the Times of India in Ahmedabad, India, and a Public Policy Fellow at the Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy in Chennai, India.
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 current project on anti-Sikh and anti-Muslim pogroms in India explores the paradox of demographic diversity: by investigating the role of neighbours in mass violence—as rescuers at one time and perpetrators of lootings, rape, and/or murder at another—I propose a qualitative understanding of the conditions under which interpersonal contact between asymmetric groups can have a palliative effect.
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.
I believe that detailed, systematic research of collective violence—studying top-down political and economic structures as well as bottom-up group and individual behaviour—can provide a robust understanding of how peace prevails and is sustained, even where the state orchestrates civilian violence. Ethnographic research, especially ethical methods that help in eliciting sensitive information, plays a key role in much of my work.
I am an independent social scientist based in India, with an M.Sc. and a D.Phil. in Sociology from the University of Oxford. I have worked as a research fellow and tutor at Oxford in the Department of Sociology and Nuffield College; the University of Amsterdam; the University of South Australia; and, IIIT-Hyderabad. Formerly, I worked as a senior journalist at the Times of India in Ahmedabad, India, and a Public Policy Fellow at the Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy in Chennai, India.
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 current project on anti-Sikh and anti-Muslim pogroms in India explores the paradox of demographic diversity: by investigating the role of neighbours in mass violence—as rescuers at one time and perpetrators of lootings, rape, and/or murder at another—I propose a qualitative understanding of the conditions under which interpersonal contact between asymmetric groups can have a palliative effect.
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.
I believe that detailed, systematic research of collective violence—studying top-down political and economic structures as well as bottom-up group and individual behaviour—can provide a robust understanding of how peace prevails and is sustained, even where the state orchestrates civilian violence. Ethnographic research, especially ethical methods that help in eliciting sensitive information, plays a key role in much of my work.