Student profiles
Abhinanda Lahiri
Email: abhinanda.lahiri@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Thesis Title
Institution
Supervisors
Dr Emma Martin, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Cultural Practices, The University of Manchester
Dr Soumhya Venkatesan, Professor of Social Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Research Summary
This research explores the politics of community dress-heritage concerning the Gaddi, a transhumant indigenous group in the Himalyan borderlands of Northwest India, to consider questions of minority inclusion, diversity and identity formation in contemporary India. It aims to critically analyse the authoritative role of the museum institution in manufacturing identities across time and space, by bringing into dress-politics discourse the little considered South Asian perspective through the experiences of a ‘Scheduled Tribe’– a bureaucratic Indian recognition offering preferential discrimination to indigenous communities. A further objective of this research is to consider a new approach to dress-heritage within museums that hold Gaddi collections.
Research Interests
Political Dress-practice, Decolonising Fashion, Indigeneity and Nation, South Asian Material Culture
Publications
Presented a paper titles ‘Gaddi wool-mobility practices in the climate-changed Himalaya’, at the ICIMOD-HUC Multispecies Migrations Symposium, Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan; November 2024
Co-presented a paper on ‘Pastoral Transitions and Sedentarisation in Himachal Pradesh’, at the 19th IUAES-World Anthropology Congress, University of Delhi, India; October 2023