Tarini Bedi

I am the Head of the Department of Anthropology and a Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. I am also the Director of the Mobilities and Methods Lab (MML), Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at UIC, and Adjunct Curator at the Field Museum of Chicago.

From 2023-2025  I held the position of Program Director in the Directorate for  Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at the US National Science Foundation (NSF). In this capacity, I worked with Social and Behavioral Scientists across the country in support of innovative social science research and managed all processes related to grant reviews, program budgets, and program planning, and outreach for the Cultural Anthropology Program

 My current doctoral advisees work on a variety of topical areas. You can get a sense of these here.

I always welcome inquiries from prospective graduate students interested in our department. I am not currently taking on new doctoral advisees at this time. However, many of my departmental colleagues are. Please do explore the range of possibilities for graduate advising and mentoring in our department here. 

My primary regional area of expertise is South Asia though I have also conducted several years of fieldwork in Singapore to trace networks of urbanization between South and Southeast Asia. I have also conducted field research with collaborators in Germany, France, Turkey, and the United States. I am currently conducting fieldwork on a new multi-year project on infrastructure development, urbanization, border design, environmental impact, and religious pilgrimage along the Kartarpur Corridor between India and Pakistan. 

My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation's Cultural Anthropology Program, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the American Institute of Indian Studies.