Current Graduate Students
Pinaki Ranjan Chandra
Graduate Assistant, Anthropology
I am a second-year MA student in the Department of Anthropology. My research has largely been interdisciplinary, where I use ethnographic and comparative historical methods to study the intersection of nature, capitalism, and inequality in North-East India and Bangladesh. In my research, I focus on dispossession, state power, and infrastructure by analyzing the diverse forms of labor and identity—read through the different lives of land and water.
For my master's thesis, I am studying property-making and land conflict among Miya (East Bengal-origin) Muslims in the chars (river islands) of Lower Assam. This study investigates how the twin processes of dispossession and changing geomorphological dynamics of the Brahmaputra affect the methods of conflict, protection, exchange, and redistribution of land in the chars of Lower Assam. I explore how commodification of space and restructuring of property rights over natural resources bring forth changes in land relations, thereby challenging and condemning the principles of redistributive justice among peasant groups.
For my master's thesis, I am studying property-making and land conflict among Miya (East Bengal-origin) Muslims in the chars (river islands) of Lower Assam. This study investigates how the twin processes of dispossession and changing geomorphological dynamics of the Brahmaputra affect the methods of conflict, protection, exchange, and redistribution of land in the chars of Lower Assam. I explore how commodification of space and restructuring of property rights over natural resources bring forth changes in land relations, thereby challenging and condemning the principles of redistributive justice among peasant groups.
Júlia Barbieri Martini
Instructor - Adj, Anthropology
Braunstein Hall