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I specialize in anthropological and historical research of South Asia, with an emphasis on caste and religion; democratization and social change; and South Asian paths of development. I served as a Professor (2009-2016) at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies and as the Director (2010-2016) of the Center for the Study of Contemporary India at Kyoto University before shifting to the University of Tokyo.

I also acted as the Convener (2010-2015) of the National Institutes for Humanities project on “Contemporary India Area Studies,” a collaborative research project based on a network of six centers in Japan. This project resulted in the publication of Contemporary India vol. 1-6 (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2015, in Japanese) as well as the launching of the series of New Horizons in South Asian Studies from Routledge, London.

Publications in English include: Caste and Equality in India: A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy (London: Routledge, 2021); as well as co-edited volumes such as Human and International Security in India (London: Routledge); Democratic Transformation and the Vernacular Public Arena in India (London: Routledge); The State in India: Past and Present (New Delhi: Oxford University Press); and Gender and Modernity: Perspectives from Asia and the Pacific (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press), among others. My articles have appeared in Modern Asian Studies, American Ethnologist, International Journal of Asian Studies, South Asia, Journal of Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, etc. 

I have been awarded three prizes: the “Okita Memorial Prize for International Development Research” from the Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development in 2010, the “Award for Promotion of Studies on Developing Countries” from the Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization in 2011, and the “Daido Life Foundation Encouragement Award for Area Studies" from the Daido Life Foundation in 2012.