Sanghamitra Das

Sanghamitra Das is a Critical Caste Studies Postdoctoral Fellow in in the Department of Anthropology and the Committee on Southern Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. Her doctoral dissertation research investigated the politics of sickle cell management in India. Sickle cell disease is a rare genetic blood disorder that is biomedically characterized as primarily affecting Dalit-Bahujan and indigenous/Adivasi communities in India. 

By centering on illness narratives, her dissertation juxtaposed the partnership between the State, biomedicine and biocapital around emerging sickle cell therapeutics against the lived experiences of those affected by sickle cell disease. Her work highlights alternative indigenous articulations of social, economic, medical and environmental justice. Sanghamitra’s dissertation fieldwork was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University.

Before joining the University of Chicago, Sanghamitra completed her Ph.D. in Biology & Society (2023) at Arizona State University and M. Phil. in Science Policy (2017) at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Her broader research investigates ways in chich notions of social difference—emanating in race, caste and indigenous positionalities—are essentialized through genetic discourses that then structure global and local political economies of health. And how in turn, those marginalized through processes of stratification utilize their embodied knowledge and expertise to navigate structures and institutions of knowledge, capital and power.

Outside academia, Sanghamitra is involved with public engagement and writes for media publications in India. She also devotes her time to health volunteering both in India and the United States. Currently, she is in the process of creating a website that utilizes mixed media to make her ethnographic research accessible to a wider audience.