Rishav Kumar Thakur
Ph.D. Student, Sociocultural Anthropology, Columbia University
Rishav is currently a third year PhD student in sociocultural anthropology at Columbia University. He studies articulations of, and claims around, identity and belonging in Assam, India. In doing so, his work aims to understand patterns of violence, dissent and queer imaginations of sociality in the region which is marked by fractures between communities identified as immigrant and autochthonous; and between "mainland" India and its Northeast frontier. Rishav has a MA in Development Studies from the Graduate Institute (Geneva) and a BA in Economics from University of Delhi.
Rishav is currently grappling with how political rhetoric and mobilisation seeps into intimate and domestic relations; and how intimate relations or new forms of the "family" work their way back to inform interactions at the scale of the political. He is interested in these flows given a long history of extraction and underdevelopment in Assam and given India's digital surge post the US/IMF/World Bank induced Liberalisation and New Economic Reforms.
Working Group Affiliation