Group members

Professor James Staples After completing a first degree in anthropology in 1990 I worked for nearly ten years as a journalist before my ongoing fascination with South India drew me back to SOAS, University of London, to undertake a PhD. Thanks to ESRC and British Academy Fellowships I was able to stay on there for four years after completion as a post-doctoral fellow, broadening out my initial research on the social consequences of leprosy to consider how attitudes towards negatively construed bodily differences in India are shaped by – and shape – ideas about what constitutes human completeness. A further 16-months’ fieldwork in Hyderabad examined how the category of disability is constituted in multiple ways, and how it is experienced by disabled people in their day-to-day interactions. I joined Brunel as a lecturer in January 2007, returning regularly to my original field site to pursue new research on various topics, including food and social mobility, and suicide. Qualifications: PhD Social Anthropology (SOAS, London) 2003 BA (Hons) Social Anthropology (SOAS, London) 1990 PG Cert (Brunel) 2008 I am a social anthropologist with a regional interest in South Asia and a long-standing fascination in how bodily differences are experienced, socially and viscerally, that continues to shape my work. I return regularly to the South Indian leprosy colony I have been visiting since 1984 to pursue ongoing fieldwork that has taken me in several directions, including a study of suicide; ongoing work on food and social mobility; and the writing of a detailed biographical account of a leprosy-affected man’s life. My latest book explores how beef-eating Christians, Muslims and Dalits in South India are experiencing the State's clampdown on cattle slaughter, alongside vigilante attacks from cow-protectionists. South Asia Medical anthropology (leprosy, disability, the body and pain, eradication) Suicide Anthropology of food Biography and life history Undergraduate Programmes Module convenor Research Methods in Anthropology (level 4) Ethnography of a Selection Region - South Asia (level 5 & 6) Anthropology and Global Health (level 6) Module contributor Fieldwork Encounters: Thinking Through Ethnography (level 4) Postgraduate Programmes Programme convenor MSc Medical Anthropology Module convenor Anthropology and Global Health Administration Divisional Senior Tutor, REF co-ordinator, Director of South Asia Studies Research Group, Deputy Divisional Lead

Professor Peggy Froerer I found my way into anthropology after studying politics, completing my PhD in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics in 2002. My doctoral research on the emergence of Hindu nationalism within adivasi communities in central India became the subject of my first book, Religious Division and Social Conflict. I joined Brunel’s Anthropology department in 2004, following postdoctoral work on the inculcation of nationalist ideologies in educational settings. Since then, I have returned regularly to India to pursue research on education, learning and schooling; childhood and youth; poverty and development; and inequality and social mobility. My second book, Futures in Flux: Education, Aspiration and Social Mobility in Rural India, considers how marginalized young people’s differentiated engagement with school education articulates with their livelihood options and aspirations for a better future. I have also been co-Investigator on a collaborative, multi-regional research project (ESRC-DfID, 2016-2018) which examines education systems, aspiration and learning outcomes in remote rural areas of India, Lesotho and Laos. I have now started a new project on educational inequalities in the UK, with a focus on the role that education plays in the (re)production of class privilege. I have directed an ethnographic film (Village Lives, Distant Powers; produced by Margaret Dickinson), which is based on my research on development, the state and corruption in central India. Qualifications: PhD Anthropology (LSE) MSc Anthropology (LSE) MA Political Science (Jawaharlal Nehru University) BA Political Science (University of Utah) I am a social anthropologists with nearly 25 years of research experience in India on subjects ranging from nationalism and ethno-religious politics, poverty and social mobility, childhood and youth, and education and schooling. Much of this research has been driven by my interest in the relationship between education and social reproduction, and the specific role that schooling plays in the reproduction of social inequalities amongst marginalised communities in rural India. This has culminated in my second book, Futures in Flux: Education, Aspiration and Social Mobility in India. With my new research, I turn my attention to educational inequalities in the UK, and specifically to the role that education plays in the (re)production of class privilege. Research area(s) South Asia Education and schooling Childhood and youth Social reproduction Poverty and development Inequality and social mobility Nationalism and ethnic conflict Programme convenor MSc Anthropology of Childhood, Youth and Education MSc Anthropology of International Development and Humanitarian Assistance Module convenor Anthropology of Education and Learning Critical Perspectives on International Development Undergraduate Dissertation Additional teaching Understanding Childhood and Youth Fieldwork Encounters Administration Co-Director, Equality and Diversity (2023-present) Director, Postgraduate Research, Department of Social Sciences, Media and Communications (2014-2021) Director, Centre for Anthropological Research on Childhood, Youth and Education (CARCYE) (2009-2014) Convenor, Undergraduate Dissertations (2012-present) Admissions Tutor (2004-2011)

Dr Luke Heslop I trained in anthropology at the University of Edinburgh (PhD 2015) and was a Fellow at the London School of Economics prior to joining Brunel as a Lecturer in Anthropology. I have worked for many years in Sri Lanka and the Maldives and my research is centred on current trends in development and anthropology around markets, kinship, infrastructure, work and labour. My ethnographic work engages with the lived experience of macro-economic and political change and global challenges in emerging economies. I specialise in trade, mobility, and the social life of work in South Asia. More recently my research focus has been on the financialisation of Development, transforming modes of Aid, and the relationship between entrepreneurship and advice. I am Co-host and Producer of the hit podcast series The Migration Menu. Office hours by appointment. Email luke.heslop@brunel.ac.uk to make an appointment. Mercantile Kinship My doctoral research traced the lives entrepreneurial families in a bustling market town in central Sri Lanka as they started and developed various businesses, built new homes, married, and campaigned for political office. Publications that stemmed from this research speak to the anthropology of money and economic sociology, kinship, class, and intergenerational relationships, as well as to a burgeoning anthropological interest in politics and protest. I am currently preparing a monograph about life, work, and social change among the trading families I have known since 2003. The monograph builds upon a body of anthropological literature on the production of kinship, class, and politics in Sri Lanka against the backdrop of a broader set of social transformations that have shaped Sri Lanka’s tumultuous post-colonial modernity; notably the war and development, economic and agrarian change, and Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism. Roads, infrastructure and connectivity 2015-2017: I worked on the ERC-funded project ‘Roads and the politics of thought: Ethnographic approaches to infrastructure in South Asia’. My research explores the development of connective infrastructure – roads, bridges, and inter-island causeways – and its social and environmental effects on the Maldives archipelago and beyond. This project encompasses a number of South Asian sites and is grounded in conceptions of the state’s responsibility for national development and modernity through planned connectivity between cities and towns from the Himālaya to the Indian Ocean. From this project I have published material on infrastructure financing, road building on coralline ecologies, archipelagic connectivity and Indian Ocean mobility. For more information on this project see: International Development and ecosystems of advice Ethnographic Solutions to Inequalities in South Asian Advice Ecosystems takes a closer look at the evolving 'landscapes of advice' in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and using the insights gained, aims to work with our partners to build ideas that can inform more effective and inclusive modes of advising. The project aims to better understand these processes to facilitate knowledge exchange from the ground-level of business advice ecosystems and co-produce a resource ‘toolkit’ for recipients and practitioners to address inequalities within advice delivery. By mapping and studying advice ecosystems alongside our partners in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, we intend to channel the untapped potential of practitioner-academic partnerships into capacity-building actions on the ground, leading to better advice relationships for people who need them the most. South Asia in West London I am currently developing a new research agenda which explores life and work for South Asian diasporas in West London. Drawing on the expertise within the South Asia Studies Research Group at Brunel, the focus on South Asia in West London cuts across three broad areas of research: Food and nutrition (this will build on our work on the anthropology of food and health in India, with the intention of including Brunel scholars in Life Sciences working on nutrition) Education and employment (this already includes separate strands on work being done in Anthropology, Geography, History, and Education) Business and Entrepreneurship (this draws on work being done in Anthropology, in History, and at the Business School) As part of this project I am producing a podcast series: Launch of The Migration Menu This project is being supported by a small grant from the Institute for Communities and Society. Sri Lanka The Maldives The Indian Ocean Modules Convening I currently convene the compulsory second year module, Practising Anthropology. I co-convene: Research Methods in Anthropology (UG - with Prof James Staples) ; Ethnographic Research Methods (PG - with Dr Andrew Beatty); Strategic Communications (PG - With Anita Howarth and Billur Ozgul). Addtional teaching: I am currently contributing teaching to the following UG and PG modules modules: Facing the Unfamilliar: Ethnographic Field work encounters (UG); South Asia - Societies and Development (PG); Religion and Power in South Asian History (PG); Anthropology of International Development (PG). Programme Development I am Co-Director of the new postgraduate programme: MSc Global South Asia Studies - please email luke.heslop@brunel.ac.uk or james.staples@brunel.ac.uk for application information.

Dr Geeta Ludhra I am a Senior Lecturer in Education and Associate Dean for Equality and Diversity (Staff) in CBASS (College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences). I joined Brunel University in 2006, entering my Higher Education career from a Deputy Headteacher position. I studied my Undergraduate degree at Brunel University when I was a mature student as a mother of two young children. I thoroughly enjoyed my degree and it led to an exciting teaching career across West London primary schools. I currently work across PostGraduate education programmes and supervise BA, MA and Doctoral research students. I am situated in the ‘Interculturality for diversity and global learning’ research group. Prior to joining Brunel, I worked across diverse primary schools in various leadership posts. My favourite teaching post was in Southall as I loved the diversity and depth of cultures and children. Southall Broadway was a rich cultural space for Indian food and clothes, and I had the opportunity to draw on my Panjabi & Hindi spoken skills within this post. I completed my PhD in 2015, titled: ‘A Black feminist exploration of the cultural experiences and identities of academically ‘successful’ British South-Asian girls’. My PhD is rooted in personal interests and lived experiences around cultural identity, Black Feminist Theory and a critically reflexive position as a narrative researcher and academic of colour. I draw on an autoethnographic lens in my current feminist work, particularly themes around anti-racism, decolonising nature and museum spaces, and developing creative methodologies in grassroots work. I currently work part-time as I also lead a registered community interest company (CIC) on educational nature events, and spend time with my granddaughter. My nature and community impact work has led to exciting collaborations outside of Brunel:- with Natural England, National Parks, DEFRA, Open University (Environment, Earth & Ecosystem Sciences department), the museums sector, and a successful Brunel seminar series Award on 'Decolonising Green Spaces', delivered in 2023. Feel free to contact me on: geeta.ludhra@brunel.ac.uk for collaborations. See 'Research areas' section above. My critical feminist lens has inspired community-based research and policy projects, to include setting up a women's writing group called 'educating geeta'. We are currently writing our first South-Asian women's creative writing book, with a focus on our lived experiences through poetry. Over the last 5 years, my research has taken on a strong community impact focus with communities who have been historically excluded and are underrecognised for the knowledge and experiences they bring. My PhD is available for download via the Brunel link below: Brunel research group: I am a member of the the following research group: Interculturality for diversity and global learning, see link below to read more about our work: I have led various monthly reading seminars to support staff build their subject knowledge in small groups, through a range of readings. These groups have included a monthly feminist reading series with a focus on global south feminst scholars, a decolonizing education series and a caste reading group: see Dalit Solidarity Network | A World without Caste discrimination (dsnuk.org) More details to be shared as this work develops. South Asian women’s ‘success’ stories and cultural heritage - an intergenerational lens. I draw on an autoethnographic research approach through a critically reflexive ‘insider’ lens. I frame my work through Black Feminist/Decolonial Feminist Theory. I raise questions about how power operates for women of colour across personal and professional spaces of their lives, to include the complex intersections of gender, race, class, caste and migration herstories. Decolonization of the curriculum through a critical planning approach. Diversity, inclusion and representation for people of colour in nature spaces - how inclusion and power operates in rural countryside spaces, which have traditionally been seen as White spaces (see ‘Impact and outreach’ tab in relation to my Secretary of State DEFRA appointed role). See Brunel Seminar Series Award and currently working on a Horizon project (Planet 4B). SCITT Primary & Secondary GPE (General Professional Education) Primary English (EAL, language inclusion and drama) Primary Curriculum Enhancement: Decolonizing the Curiculum: Culturally Responsive Pedagogies Postgraduate research Reading seminar series for the Interculturality research group: Feminist reading group | Brunel University London

Dr Baljinder Ghoman I am an experienced bid writer and knowledge exchange professional with considerable experience of generating concepts, building consortia (partnerships) and successfully applying for grants across a range of sectors. I draw on this experience to identify the opportunity (unmet market need) early on and to connect the appropriate expertise to explore the challenge/problem space, and identify the appropriate funding vehicle to support the collaboration. I have delivered a range of collaborations that have brought together the arts & humanities and digital media (Art-Science collaborations) with both industry, local government and the charitable sector. Examples include: Arts Council England - Creative People and Places Fund, Dept for Transport - Road Safety Trust, Parkinsons UK and a Brunel Resilience Fund for DASH (a local disability charity). I am supporting the university to develop its strategy for the creative sector. I have developed Brunel Creative, an initiative to showcase the creative and digital media talent and excellent studio spaces (facilities) that can be used to deliver high quality research outcomes to industry and to the local community. I am an active member of the West London HEI growth and Innovation team tasked with helping West London to recover from the COIVD-19 pandemic. Connect with me on LinkedIn

Professor Royona Mitra Royona Mitra (she/her) is Professor in Dance and Performance Cultures and the author of Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism (Palgrave, May 2015). Her first monograph was awarded the 2017 de la Torre Bueno First Book Award by the Dance Studies Association (DSA) and it was runner-up for the 2016 New Career Research in Theatre/Performance awarded by the Theatre & Performance Research Association (TaPRA). Her forthcoming monograph Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch is in press and due for publication in spring 2025 with Oxford University Press. The monograph's conceptual premise was published in an article titled "Unmaking Contact: Choreographic Touch at the Intersections of Race, Caste and Gender", and was awarded Dance Studies Association's Gertrude Lippincott Award in 2022 for the Best English Language Journal Article. Royona's co-edited journal special issue titled "Outing Archives/Archives Outing" for Contemporary Theatre Review journal, alongside Profs Bryce Lease and Melissa Blanco Borelli, was awarded the Theatre and Performance Research Association's Edited Collection Prize in 2022. Prior to joining the Theatre Department at Brunel in 2013, Royona was a Senior Lecturer in the Drama Department at University of Wolverhampton where she was also the MA Drama Course Leader. She has also taught in the Theatre and Performance Department at the University of Plymouth. Royona served as a member on the REF2021 Sub Panel 33 (2018-2022). She is Co-Chair of the Theatre and Performance Research Association (2022- ) alongside Dr Broderick Chow. She was elected as Secretary to join the Executive Committee for SCUDD (Standing Conference for University Drama Department) from 2013-2016. She was also an elected member of DSA’s (Dance Studies Association) Board of Directors (2018-2022), and a Working Group Convenor for the Bodies and Performance WG of TaPRA (2015-2018). She has served on the editorial board for DSA's Studies in Dance History series (2015-2018), was a co-editor for the Training Grounds section of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal (2015-2018), and is on the editorial board for Contemporary Theatre Review. Royona's research examines systems of oppression in dance and performance cultures at the intersections of bodies, social power regimes, and choreography as resistance, and she contributes to the fields of diaspora and performance, South Asian dance and performance cultures, critical dance studies and performance studies. Her first monograph Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism analyses the relationship between this British-Asian dance artist's complex identity-positions and his art through the lens of ‘new interculturalism’. Through seven key case studies from Khan’s oeuvre, this book demonstrates how Khan’s philosophy and aesthetic of ‘new interculturalism’ is a challenge to the 1980s predominantly western ‘intercultural theatre’ project, as a more nuanced and embodied approach to representing Othernesses, from his own position of the Other. Additionally, the book challenges popular perception of Khan’s art as contemporary South Asian dance by suggesting that, instead, Khan uses South Asian dramaturgical principles to transform the western contemporary dance landscape in intercultural ways. Offering the first full-length investigation of Akram Khan’s work, this book is essential reading for students, researchers, practitioners and fans of Khan’s work. Her current book project titled Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch contracted with Oxford University Press and scheduled for publication in 2025, interrogates the politics of choreographing touch at the intersections of race, gender, caste, faith, sexuality, new interculturalisms and decoloniaity, and reframes contact in choreography beyond tactility through foregrounding transnational South Asian choreographic practices. Royona is currently working alongside Dr. Prarthana Purkayastha (Royal Holloway University, UK) and Dr. Anusha Kedhar (University of California, Riverside) on a project titled “South Asian Dance Equity (SADE): The Arts British South Asian Dance Ignores,” which is being funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as a Dance Research Matters Network Grant project. She is also working on a double volume co-edited anthology project alongside Drs Anurima Banerji (UCLA, USA) and Jasmine Johnson (UPenn, USA) titled The Oxford Handbooks of Dance Praxis, contracted with Oxford University Press. She completed a British Academy Small Grant funded project titled ‘Contemporary Dance and Whiteness' alongside Drs Simon Ellis (Coventry) and Arabella Stanger (Sussex) in 2019. The project’s aim was to examine race and racism in British contemporary dance and to critique whiteness as part of a commitment to the field’s anti-racist futures. The project examines whiteness as a structure of racism that exists in the relationships between personal prejudice, cultural norms, and the lived conditions of inequality and racial violence. Working in coalition with UK and US colleagues from across theatre and dance studies, Royona has been leading conversations on anti-racism for these disciplines as a scholar and an educator, with a strong commiment to dismantling their whiteness. Interculturalism and Performance Studies Critical Race Theory and Performance Studies Postcolonial Studies, Decolonialities and Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies Dance, Performance and Diaspora Studies South Asian Dance Studies Royona’s teaching specialisms are in the fields of physical theatre/dance–theatre, live art practices, dance and embodiment, intercultural performance, critical theory and anti-racism and performance. She would be keen to supervise PhD projects in the above areas and also projects that interrogate the relationships between bodies, cultures, gender, race, sexuality and identity in performance.

Dr Rohini Rai I am a sociologist of race & ethnicity, and am a Lecturer in the Sociology of Race at the Department of Social and Political Sciences in Brunel. My areas of research and teaching interest include 'race', ethnicity and racialization; global racisms; postcolonial and decolonial theories; Global South urbanisms; and the Himalaya and North East India. I completed my PhD from the University of Manchester in 2019. My PhD thesis titled, 'Northeastern Delhi: 'Race', space and identity in a postcolonial, globalising city' explores and examines racialization and racism in contemporary India, in relation to ethnic and indigenous minorities who are migrants from India's Northeastern and Himalayan borderlands in the city of Delhi. Prior to joining Brunel in December 2021, I was a Research Associate at the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), University of Manchester, of which I am still an associate member. At CoDE, I was a part of an ESRC-funded research project exploring ethnic inequalties in UK Higher Education, where my research particularly focussed on the current 'Decolonial turn' in the disciplines of British history and geography. I welcome supervising/tutoring students who are interested in similar topics. 'race', ethnicity and racialization; global racisms; postcolonial and decolonial theories; Global South urbanisms; and the Himalaya and North East India. I currently teach the following modules: Racism, Identity and Difference. Becoming a Critical Scholar (Skills II).

Professor Veena Kumari Professor Veena Kumari obtained a PhD in Psychology from Banaras Hindu University, India in 1993 prior to joining the Institute of Psychiatry, London for post-doctoral research. She became a Beit Memorial Research Fellow in 1999, a Wellcome Senior Fellow in Basic Biomedical Science in 2002, and a Full Professor in 2006 at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (formerly known as the Institute of Psychiatry), King’s College London, UK. She left King’s College London in 2016 to join the Sovereign Health Group (USA) as the Chief Scientific Officer and returned to the UK in 2018 to join Brunel University London as Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Centre for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience (CCN). Her research interests include the neurobiological effects of pharmacological and psychological treatments in psychosis, neurobiology of violence in mental illness, psychobiology of addiction, and personality and brain functioning. Prof Kumari has over 300 publications in reputed psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience journals and received various national and international awards for her research including the Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance of Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, USA (1999), research fellowship from BEIT Memorial Foundation (1999-2002), the BAP (British Association of Psychopharmacology) Clinical Psychopharmacology Prize (2002), Wellcome Senior Fellowship in Basic Biomedical Science (2002-2009), the prestigious Humboldt Research Award (2014), and most recently a Bonn International Fellowship (2020/21). Professor Kumari has supervised a large number of post-graduate and doctoral students and served in editor or editorial board member roles for a number of psychology and psychiatry journals. Cognitive and affective deficits in schizophrenia and personality disorders Neurobiological effects and predictors of outcome following drug and psychological treatments Neurobiology of violence and addiction Sleep deprivation and mental health Neuroscience of mindfulness Cognitive psychopharmacology, particularly the effects of psychostimulants, antipsychotics, nicotine and anxiolytics Neurobiology of sex and sexual-orientation related differences Personality neuroscience MSc Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience (starting Oct 2018) Module Lead for PY5618 - Cognitive Psychopharmacology and Addiction Module Lead for PY5616 - Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience - Core Topics