Ajantha Subramanian
Background
Ajantha Subramanian is an Indian-American historical anthropologist, author, and academic. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University. Formerly the Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, she currently serves as Professor of Anthropology and Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her scholarly research explores the political economy of caste, space, citizenship, labor, meritocracy, and social
Address:
New York, New York / Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Occupation:
• CUNY Graduate Center (Professor of Anthropology)
• Harvard University (Former Mehra Family Professor & Department Chair)
Social Media Account:
About: - Ajantha Subramanian is an Indian-American historical anthropologist, author, and academic. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University. Formerly the Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, she currently serves as Professor of Anthropology and Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her scholarly research explores the political economy of caste, space, citizenship, labor, meritocracy, and social movements across South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. She is the author of Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India (2009) and The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (2019), which critically examines how upper-caste privilege and capital are transformed into notions of meritocracy within elite institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).