Research Profile
2021-22: Co-PI on VolkswagenStiftung Project (Ref No. 99692) on 'Children in Between: Disruptions of Transnational Surrogacy in the Time of Covid-19 and its Aftermath'. Grant Amount: 120,000 Euros.
With PI Anika Konig (Freie Universitat, Berlin) and co-PI, Heather Jacobson (University of Texas, Arlington), this project is keen on exploring the aftermath of the pandemic in terms of its impact on intended parents and their newborns in transnational cases of surrogacy. Ethnographic research will be conducted in Germany, USA and India.
2018: PI on Wellcome Trust UK Small Grants (209620/Z/17/Z) on ‘A Preliminary Study of Ageing and Assisted Reproduction in India’. Grant Amount: INR 25,00,000 (28000 GBP for six months).
Funding covered fieldwork in the North Indian state of Haryana, and the international Workshop on ‘Reframing the Biological Clock: Exploring Ageing and Reproduction in Contemporary Ethnographies’ from 17-18 August 2018 at IITH with over 20 international participants. Findings are slated for two dedicated special issues in Anthropology and Ageing, and Reproductive Biomedicine and Society Online. Forthcoming papers include: ‘Infertility as Inevitable: Chronic Lifestyles, Temporal Inevitability and the Making of Abnormal Bodies in India’ Anthropology and Medicine (2020); and ‘Death and Rebirth in Assisted Reproduction: Fictions and Fantasies in the Understanding of Kinship in Contemporary India’, Contemporary South Asia (2021).
2018-19: PI on the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR)-funded Minor Project grant (02/280/2017-18/RP/Minor) on ‘Post-Menopausal Reproduction: Ageing, Family and Assisted Reproduction in Contemporary India’. Grant Amount: INR 3,00,000 for twelve months.
Preliminary findings published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics in 2018.
2017-2020: Co-PI on Swedish Research Council funded research on commercial surrogacy in India titled, ‘From Human Waste into Profitable Resource. Gender, Biopolitics and Neo-Liberalism in Indian Commercial Surrogacy’ with Johanna Gondouin, Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies, Stockholm University; Grant Amount 5,42,85,547.39 INR (70,00,000 Swedish Krona for four years).
Funding supported fieldwork in Hyderabad, Delhi and Goa (including interviewing surrogates, egg donors and surrogacy agents: findings being analysed for publication).
2015—16 Research on ageing, intimacy and in-vitro fertilization being pursued at Manipal Assisted Reproduction Centre, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal University.
2009—15 Doctoral Research in the area of transnational commercial surrogacy in India. My thesis explores the interface between technology and interpersonal relationships through a case study of IVF-Surrogacy in India.
2003–04 Under the aegis of The Developing Countries Research Centre (DCRC), Delhi University carried out an independent research project on purdah amongst the women of an urban community.
