Professor Nayanika Mookherjee
| Post Nominals | FRSA (Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts) |
|---|---|
| Biography | I am a Professor of Political Anthropology, Co-Director of the Institute of Advanced Study and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). The overarching theme that connects my work concerns an ethnographic exploration of public memories of violent pasts and aesthetic practices of reparative futures. What this means is how do we ethically engage with the various violent pasts that we live in today and how can these be resolved, how do we engage with the idea of justice through our zones of nurturance, through the law, the arts, through our senses so that we have a better future? Located within the debates of political anthropology my ethnographically-informed, interdisciplinary, research specialisation, teaching and publications are on the state, violence, memory, aesthetics, memorialisation, visual practices, ethics, irreconciliation, adoption and South Asia. My ethnographic research engages with (i) public memories of wartime sexual violence; (ii) the role of graphic ethnography in translating difficult stories; (iii) war crimes tribunals and irreconciliation; (iv) memorialisation of past violence and the history of the enslaved; (v) digital surveillance (vi) transnational adoption and genetic citizenship (vii) ethics (viii) South Asia. I have published extensively on anthropology of violence, ethics and aesthetics. Notable publications include: 1) Funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation I published Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memory and the Bangladesh War of 1971 [Duke University Press, (2015); with a foreword by Prof. Veena Das, endorsements by Profs. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Dina Siddiqi, Michael Lambek and others] was shortlisted for awards generating interviews on Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed along with various academic and media reviews and honours. 2) Based on Spectral Wound, and funded by ESRC Impact Acceleration Fund in 2019, I co-authored with Najmunnahar Keya a set of (ii) guidelines, graphic novel and animation film Birangona and ethical testimonies of sexual violence during conflict, (2019) which received the 2019 Praxis Award from the Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists and was highly rated as an impact case study for REF 2021. I have also published extensively and am teaching on the growing field of graphic ethnography. 3) Funded by the Leverhulme Foundation and a one-month scholarly residency fellowship in the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, I have published extensively on (iii) memorialisation of violent pasts. I engage with debates on aesthetics in four edited volumes with Christopher Pinney (Aesthetics of Nations, 2011), Tariq Jazeel (Aesthetics, Politics, Conflict drawing on Jacques Ranciere, 2015) and Self in South Asia (2013). Publication of the volume ‘On Irreconciliation’ (JRAI book series 2022) led to the invitation to deliver the keynote lectures: 2023 Raymond Firth lecture at the Association of Social Anthropology annual conference; 2023 King’s Keynote lecture for Annual South Asia conference; 2023 Jashodhara Bagchi Inaugural Memorial Lecture, Kolkata, India. Drawing from this volume, my book: ‘Arts of Irreconciliation and the Bangladesh War of 1971’ is under preparation. 4) Following my publications on memorialisation of wars and supported by Institute of Advanced Study and Durham University’s EDI fund, I am exploring the ‘Absence Presence of Durham’s Black History’ with Dr Liam Liburd (History), Dr Sol Gamsu (Sociology) and various academic and non-academic collaborators. 5) A British Academy and Institute of Advanced Studies Christopherson Knotts fellowship has supported my ongoing research on Children Born of War, Adoption and Returnee Adoptees in Bangladesh, Europe and North America. 6) I am continuing to research and co-author on digital surveillance and Rohingya communities with Dr Mark Lacy and Dr Sadaf Noor Islam (Funded by British Academy). 7) My focus on ethics emerges from my own research as well as being an Ethics officer of the ASA (Association of Social Anthropology) from 2007-2012 when I updated the ASA ethics code in consultation with the members and being a part of the ethics committee of the World Council of Anthropological Associations. |
| Research Interests | (i) public memories of wartime sexual violence; (ii) the role of graphic ethnography in translating difficult stories; (iii) war crimes tribunals and irreconciliation; (iv) memorialisation of past violence and the history of the enslaved; (v) digital surveillance; (vi) transnational adoption and genetic citizenship; (vii) ethics; (viii) South Asia |