Invited Talks
2014 Toenails, bells and carpenters: An ethnographic study of the Hindi Television Soap Opera Industry, Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics, UK, November 27
2013 ‘Rice and Sugar: Food talk and diabetes in Chennai, Tamilnadu, South India’. Talk at the Graduate School of Asian and African Studies, Kyoto University, Japan, October 17.
2013 ‘Talking about diabetes: Ethnographic observations’- Invited lecture to students of P.G. Diploma course in Health Communications, Sarojini Naidu school of Media and Communications, University of Hyderabad, October 25.
2012. March. ‘Anthropology Today’. Department of Anthropology, University of Madras.
2009 April. ‘Unfinishing schools: Learning ‘computer’ in mofussil Tamilnadu’. Center for South Asian Studies. University of Edinburgh.
2008 ‘The Village and Villagers as Kin: Kinship among a Transnational Tamil Brahman Subcaste, South India’. South Asia Center. Syracuse University.
2006, October "Not far enough": Brahman women and menstrual seclusion in Tamilnadu, Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics. Research Seminar on Anthropological Theory
2006, September, "Not far enough": Brahman women and menstrual seclusion in Tamilnadu, South Asia Center. Syracuse University, New York.
2005, March, (with C.J.Fuller) ‘Brahmans, Migration and Software: The Making of Contemporary Chennai’ (Madras). The Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies. Princeton University.
2004, October, (with C.J.Fuller) ‘Globalisation, Information technology and the middle class in Chennai’. South Asian History Seminar. St. Antony’s college. Oxford University.
2004, September, (with C.J.Fuller) Globalisation, Information technology and the middle class in Chennai’ Columbia University. Department of Anthropology.
2004, March, (with C.J.Fuller) ‘The globalising middle class: a sociological inquiry in Chennai’ Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai.
Conference/Workshop Presentations
2014 Struggling with “Nayi soch”: Hindi TV serials today. Invited participation at The International Seminar on 'Locating Gender in the New Middle Class in South Asia', Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and Women’s Studies and Development Centre, University of Delhi, at IIAS, Shimla.
2014. Who will make all this food”? Discourse on “diet” and diabetes in Chennai, South India. Paper presented at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, USA, March 27.
2014 'The remote and the internet: New media technologies and television audience in India'. Paper to be presented at the European Conference on South Asian Studies (ECSAS), Zurich, Switzerland, July 27.
2012.'Lost in translation? An ethnographic study of the makers and consumers of Hindi soap-operas'. Paper presented at a conference on 'Changing face of of Indian media'. March 21-22. Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad, India.
2009. ‘Now medicine is food: Self-medication among urban poor women in Tamilnadu, South India’. Paper presented at British Association of South Asian Studies (BASAS) Annual conference, University of Edinburgh.
2005 (with C.J. Fuller) “Marriage and the family among Information Technology professionals in India”. International Conference on New Global Workforces and Virtual Workplaces: Connections, Culture, and Control. National Institute of Advanced Studies. Indian Institute of Science. Bangalore.
2005 “‘From KG to IT’: Middle class Attitudes to Education in Chennai’. Paper presented at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Meetings, Chicago.
Organised workshops/conference panels
2014 One-day seminar on 'Health Practices and Engagements in India', Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Hyderabad, April 5.
2009 Workshop on ‘Globalisation in/and Mofussil India’, Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics, UK.
2008 ‘Recreating summer holidays through the year: Kinship among the Vatima Brahmans in Tamilnadu’. Presented at the Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S.A.
2003 ‘Finding various paths: women deciding their health in Tamil Nadu, India’, Paper presented at the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.