Overview
I am an anthropologist of the environment, science, and medicine. My current book manuscript is a historically grounded ethnography of agricultural biotechnology in India. Along with asking what a good seed is for farmers and biotechnologists, I trace how knowledge about objects like genetically modified seeds is formed at intersections of practice, people, and time. My next project is an inquiry into the long relation between environmental heat and the body in South Asia. I find historically emerging meanings of words and concepts powerful. My teaching is often grounded in questions of ethics and creative negotiations with power around practices, technologies, and ideas that acquire palimpsests of meanings over time and across place.
I have lived in India, Singapore, and the U.S. I know Bengali, Hindi, English, and I have been learning Mughal Persian for the past few years. My research and teaching are infused with my own senses of self, belonging, and identity.
When I am not teaching or doing research, I am interested in healing plants, stars, and cultural interpretations of dreams.
Publications
2024:
Chaudhuri, Ashawari. "The Good Seed: Bt Cotton, Braided Time, and Agricultural Biotechnology in India." Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 97 no. 4, 2024, p. 639-673. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/anq.2024.a948151
“Faith in Immunity and Structures of Trust: COVID-19 Vaccines from Asian Perspectives” (With Carola Lorea, Erica Larson, and Emily Hertzman)
Asian Medicine 19(1):1-33 DOI: 10.1163/15734218-12341547
2023:
“The Paradox of Heat: Ubiquity, Invisibility, and Bodies in India”. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Spotlight On: Extreme Heat in Urban South Asia: https://www.ijurr.org/spotlight-on/extreme-heat/the-paradox-of-heat-ubiquity-invisibility-and-bodies-in-india/
Public facing articles:
2022. "Terracotta as Technology: Then and Now". Heat in Urban Asia. National University of Singapore: https://nus.edu.sg/nuslibraries/dsprojects/heatinurbanasia/02-technologies/terracotta-as-technology-then-and-now
2022. "Heat and the Body in Biomedicine and Ayurveda". Heat in Urban Asia. National university of Singapore: https://nus.edu.sg/nuslibraries/dsprojects/heatinurbanasia/01-bodies/heat-and-the-body-in-biomedicine-and-ayurveda
