Nikhil Anand

Image with the Cultural Anthropology logo and headshots of the new editors: Bridget Guarasci, Sarah E. Vaughn, Amelia Moore, Eleana Kim and Ryo Morimoto, listed along with their university affiliations.

We are happy to announce the new editorial collective of Cultural Anthropology!
Bridget Guarasci and Sarah E. Vaughn, Amelia Moore, Eleana Kim and Ryo Morimoto will serve from 2026 to 2029!
Journal submissions are open!

‘Exclusively for the elite’: why Mumbai’s new motorway is a symbol of the divide between rich and poor With 64% of the city’s residents relying on buses and trains so overloaded that up to 10 passengers die a day, anger is rising over a taxpayer-funded road most will never use

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

*POSTDOC ANNOUNCEMENT* @casipenn.bsky.social @upenn.edu

We invite recent PhDs in the social sciences, whose work focuses on contemporary India, to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship position for the 2026-2027 academic year. Review of applications begins Feb 2.

More at the link below 👇

CASI is thrilled to announce that Gareth Nellis will be our new Director as of July 1, 2026! He will also serve as Penn SAS Associate Professor of Political Science and hold the Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India. Please join us in welcoming him to Penn!

In this CASI Deep Dive IiT Interview, Managing Editor @rohanvenkat.bsky.social speaks to recent CASI-Khemka Distinguished Lecturer @ndubash.bsky.social (Princeton University) about "The 'Domestication' of Climate Change Policy in India" casi.sas.upenn.edu/iit/casi-dee...

Happy to announce that Gareth Nellis will be the incoming Director of @casipenn.bsky.social starting this July :)

www.sas.upenn.edu/news/gareth-...

On and In Their Bodies: Masculinist Violence, Criminalization, and Black Womanhood in Trinidad By Leniqueca A. Welcome In this article, I place in conversation multiple forms of violence against those who occupy the category of poor black woman in Trinidad: the abuse and premature death of these women at the hands of their partners or strangers, the physical and discursive violence against black women by the state, the theft of their children due to inter/intra-community and police violence, and the grief black women are often forced to carry. I show how these different forms of violence converge on and in black women’s bodies and, rather than being distinct in causation and effect, constitute multiple iterations of the ongoing colonialist extraction of black women’s lives for the creation of different forms of masculinist state and economic power. Ultimately, I show how masculine and feminine subjectivities are produced in tandem with racialized positionings through violence and comprehensively document what is gendered violence and how it is embodied.

Congratulations 🎊 👏 💐 to Leniqueca Welcome for winning this year's SCA Cultural Horizons Prize for her article, "On and In Their Bodies: Masculinist Violence, Criminalization, and Black Womanhood in Trinidad"

Finally, I return to Peters & Steinberg’s provocation
of more-than-wet ontologies to unpack how an amphibious anthropology might register and theorize the permeability of the body and, in so doing, address the long-standing separations between environmental science and the health sciences
END

Second, thinking with Brathwaite’s formulation of tidalectics and Tiffany L. King’s formulation of shoals, I show how concepts of an amphibious anthropology lend themselves to reading the compromised yet consequent forces with which sedimented and sodden social and nat-
ural histories matter. 5/6

Building on the work of scholars in anthropology, geography, STS, and Black studies, I first draw attention to the spatial and temporal rhythms in which social groups dwell in amphibious
terrain. 4/6

Nevertheless, despite their accreted force (and also perhaps because of it), Post/colonial projects to stabilize and concretize coasts are always falling apart. Their disrepair manifests how projects, and the lives and landscapes they make, continue to be situated in amphibious worlds. 3/6

In this review how coastal development projects require and produce emptied and flattened surfaces necessary for the workings of coloniality, racial capitalism, and enslavement, dispossessing amphibious modes of life and livelihood in their wake. 2/6

After Coasts: Cartography, Desiccation, and Dwelling in Amphibious Worlds As cities and nation-states design massive coastal development projects, I show in this review how these projects require and produce emptied and flattened surfaces necessary for the workings of colon...

*New Review Article*: After Coasts: Cartography,Desiccation, and Dwelling in Amphibious Worlds

#openaccess 1/6

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Saw it yesterday! It was absolutely 🤯 Congratulations!!

Had the total pleasure of speaking with @gilanthro.bsky.social
@newbooksnetwork.bsky.social about Futures after Progress (@uchicagopress.bsky.social). Interview up now! ✨

newbooksnetwork.com/chloe-ahmann...

@casipenn.bsky.social and the Department of Anthropology @upenn.bsky.social seek to hire a Climate Postdoc for the 2025-26 academic year. Scholars working on environment-society relations, cities and urbanization, and climate change in India, apply!

casi.sas.upenn.edu/postdoctoral...

If you would like to write for India in Transition, a publication from the University of Pennsylvania's @casipenn.bsky.social, see our guidelines here – casi.sas.upenn.edu/iit/submissi...

And get in touch with me!

JOB ANNOUNCEMENT:

Interested in supporting academic and outreach programs focused on the study of India @upenn.bsky.social? Consider applying to join the super team @casipenn.bsky.social as Assistant Director!

PhD Application Guidelines.pdf | Powered by Box

For those preparing PhD applications to Geography + Anthropology programs in the US in this application cycle,

This guide, prepared by two members of Penn EnviroLab, might be helpful.

upenn.app.box.com/s/a2xbf7xg31...

pls share: funded by EPA: Economy & Space, up to 8 travel + accommodation stipends available to enable doctoral & postdoctoral researchers to participate in the "ideational geographies" workshop at UBC, June 11-13, 2025. Application details:
blogs.ubc.ca/peck/researc...

Congratulations!

I created this @dukepress.bsky.social starter pack, since it seemed like time! I'm sure I have missed some people so write me and I will add you in. go.bsky.app/D2cEz4t

So You’re Applying to Graduate School (in Anthropology) Applying to graduate school can seem daunting, but if you take it step by step it doesn't need to be so. But this means starting the process early -- like a year before you plan on applying -- and mak...

Here’s my guide to applying to graduate school. Ostensibly it’s for anthropology, but I think it’s generally applicable—I’d be happy to learn if it doesn’t work for other disciplines! matthewwolfmeyer.com/2012/08/12/s...

This book looks terrific. Look forward to reading 😊

Finally made the move over. Hello Blue Skyers!

Will be posting/ reading about #anthropology, #environment, #climatechange, #water and #cities here.