I am a cultural anthropologist broadly interested in how domestic arrangements and interpersonal relationships inform contemporary citizenship regimes. My research and scholarship engage these themes in the context of minoritized Hindu and Dalit communities in Sindh, Pakistan.
Currently I am involved in two projects. The first one is a book-length account of how Hindu women’s domestic relations and religious activities reconfigure the constraints and promises of Pakistani citizenship. I use this account to argue that religious citizenship and political authority must constantly be labored towards on the uncertain grounds of everyday relations and ordinary desires. Some of this material was recently published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI).
I also have an enduring interest in the global politics of caste emancipation as they make themselves felt in Pakistan. In a series of articles, I ask how categories of social analysis around caste and religion are produced and contested, and how people imagine alternative political possibilities from marginalized positions. Writing from this project has appeared in American Ethnologist, South Asia, and Journal of Sindhi Studies.
I hold a doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the University of Chicago. I am also a LUMS alumna. I recently completed a fellowship at Harvard Divinity School’s Women’s Studies in Religion Program. At LUMS, I teach undergraduate courses across political and legal anthropology, South Asian religions, and gender studies.
"Jogendranath Mandal and the Politics of Dalit Recognition in Pakistan," South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 43:1, 119-135 (2020)
"Wonders Within Domestic Encounters: Three Women from Elias Khwabnama," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 25:4, 594-610 (2024)
""So That We May Be Counted": Caste, Religion, and Untimely Numbers in Pakistan s National Census," American Ethnologist 51:3, 363-375 (2024)
"Entangled Impurities in Contemporary Sindh: Some Evidence from Law and Bureaucracy," Journal of Sindhi Studies 3:1, e1-e25 (2023)
With Natasha Raheja. "Unwelcome Guests and Hostages: Minority Claims on the State," Political and Legal Anthropology Review Online. (2020)
"Corruption, Friendship, and Women s Bodies: Exchanges with SherAli Tareen," ReOrient: Journal of Critical Muslim Studies 9:2, 384-387 (2025)
"Psychic Borders, Enforced Disappearances, and Everyday Life: Book Review of Ather Zia s Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women s Activism in Kashmir (University of Washington Press 2019)," Political and Legal Anthropology Review 43:1 (2020)
"Everyday Religiosity and Gendered Public Space," Harvard Divinity Bulletin (Spring Issue) (2025)
With Natasha Raheja. "Pakistani Politicians as Hindu Gods: The Visual Excesses of a Religious National Imaginary," POLAR Emergent Conversations: The Aesthetic Politics of Far-Right Movements (2023)
"Learning to Sew with Religious Others," Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Tampa FL (online) (2024)
"Knots in the Weave," Encounters of Difference Workshop (MEUS), University College London, UK (online) (2024)
"Deferring Jurisdiction: Pakistani Hindu Families in the Eyes of Which Law?" Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Baltimore MD (online) (2021)
"Three Women from Elias Khwabnama," Symposium on New Approaches to Bangladesh Studies, Annual South Asia Conference, Madison WI (2023)
"Conversion Between Religion and Desire: Thinking the Indeterminate Other in Pakistan" AES/APLA Annual Conference, Princeton NJ (2023)
"Jogendranath Mandal and the Politics of Dalit Recognition in Pakistan," South Asian Muslim Studies Association Symposium, Annual South Asia Conference, Madison, WI (2019)
"Ritual Boundaries and the Feminine Peril of Mutual Corruption," Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Diego CA (2024)
"Hindu Darshan, Muslim Ritual, and the Web of Everyday Life," Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Honolulu HI (online) (2022)
"Waiting for the Flood," Annual South Asia Conference, Madison WI (online) (2025)
"Counting to Save Sindh: Infelicitous Identities in the 2017 National Census," Sindh ECR Workshop, Center of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, UK (online) (2021)
"God, Saint, Policeman: Jhoolelal Across Time and Space," Roundtable on Forms of Policing in South Asia, Annual South Asia Conference, Madison, WI (2019)
