I grew up in Bengaluru, India, and graduated from the University of California, San Diego, where I studied ecology and history. I worked in freshwater ecology, hiking through the eastern Sierra Nevada to study plankton in alpine and glacial lakes. When a later research project on human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka introduced me to the deep entanglement of people and landscapes, I was drawn for the first time to the field of environmental history.
My senior project, How to Kill a Tiger: British and Adivasi Ways of Seeing Wild Animals in Eastern India, c. 1860–1910, brought together the fields of animal history and indigenous history in the study of colonial India to reveal new sets of political-economic relationships between the colonial state, Adivasi communities, and animals in the forests of eastern and central India. I drew on colonial administrative accounts, hunting memoirs, and Santal literature to explore divergent British colonial and Santal approaches to wild animals and hunting.
At Columbia and LSE, I hope to further my interest in the longer intellectual and cultural legacies of colonialism. I am particularly interested in decolonization and postcolonial studies, including how colonial systems of knowledge, power, and identity continue to shape how communities understand themselves after formal colonial rule has ended. My background in environmental history has led me to think about these questions through relationships between people, animals, and land, and I hope to continue exploring these connections in my work.
Outside of my academic work, I’m a musician and songwriter. I love film, ceramics, hiking, and learning new languages. I also love running, and hope to run the NYC marathon one day!
