(Photo by Eileen Travell)

Hello नमस्कार سلام

I am a cultural anthropologist and filmmaker. My work examines the practice of design and the production and circulation of everyday consumer objects, particularly fashion.

Most of my research has been in India and the United States, tracing how textiles, clothing, images, and narratives take shape and travel between factories, craft workshops, design schools, photography studios, department stores, and museum collections; and how the people involved in these fashion circuits value their work and imagine themselves in the objects that result from it.

I draw on methods from visual and museum anthropology, media ethnography, and the anthropology of work, which is a long way of saying I do my research collaboratively by watching, listening, filming, and spending time with people as they make things and talk about that making.

I joined the faculty at the City College of New York (CUNY) in 2026, after completing my Ph.D. in Anthropology at New York University, where I also graduated from the Program in Culture & Media. I am a 2026 ACLS Fellow and was recently a Curatorial Fellow at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve previously held research fellowships and grants from the Smithsonian, Royal Anthropological Institute, Textile Society of America, Society for Visual Anthropology, and NYU Humanities Center.

My writing has appeared in journals — American Anthropologist (forthcoming), Visual Anthropology Review, Anthropology of Work Review, Museum Worlds, Current Anthropology, Film, Fashion & Consumption — along with edited volumes and online forums. My documentary films have screened in festivals, universities, and community contexts around the world. I’m currently developing curatorial projects.

Beyond my own research, I work to build an open, collaborative, and outward-looking anthropology. I serve on the board of the Society for Visual Anthropology, am a core member of the The Collective for Multimodal Makers, Publishers, Collaborators, and Teachers, and I co-founded MERiSA, an interdisciplinary curatorial collaborative that brings together scholars, activists, and filmmakers working on media-related concerns in South Asia.