News and Awards

September 21, 2023
Thinking with Ngangas

Read Anthropology Professor Stephan Palmié's latest book.

August 23, 2023
Sarah Newman

Professor Sarah Newman reframes the history of waste.

August 3, 2023
Fernando Ortiz

Read Professor Stephan Palmié's edited volume on Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz.

August 3, 2023
Working the Difference

Read Anthropology Professor E. Summerson Carr's latest book.

August 2, 2023
Footprints from Fossils to Gallows

Read Anthropology Professor Russell H. Tuttle's latest book.

Department Events

October 16, 2023
Monday Seminar
Elemental Ethnography
Cymene Howe | (Rice University)
October 23, 2023
Monday Seminar
Jovan Scott Lewis |(University of California, Berkeley)
October 30, 2023
Monday Seminar
Scott MacLochlainn |(Johns Hopkins University)
November 6, 2023
Monday Seminar
Alicia Odewale |(University of Tulsa)
November 13, 2023
Monday Seminar
Tess Lea |(University of Sydney)

Spotlight

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. 

Sanghamitra Das - Postdoctoral Fellow.jpg

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.

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