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Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Assistant Dean of Faculty, Ashoka University
Ph.D. Emory UniversitySwargajyoti Gohain is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology. She has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Emory University, U.S.A., and a Bachelors and Masters in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University. She has held postdoctoral positions in the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, Netherlands, and the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. Before joining Ashoka University, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
Swargajyoti Gohain has fieldwork experience in Northeast India and the Himalayan region. Her first monograph, Imagined Geographies in the Indo-Tibetan Borderlands (2020, Amsterdam University Press) was based on empirical and historical research on Tawang and West Kameng, two districts in west Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Bhutan and Tibet, which have been the focus of a long-drawn boundary conflict between India and China. The book concerns the new spatial imaginations that have emerged among Tibetan Buddhist communities in the Indian Himalayan region, following the closure of the Indo-Tibetan border passages. The book was awarded Honorary Mention for the James Fisher Book Prize for first book on the Himalayas by the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies. She has been the recipient of Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Award, Charles Wallace India Trust award, Sir Ratan Tata Fellowship, and UGC’s Junior Research Fellowship (JRF).
Swargajyoti Gohain’s research interests includes the anthropology of state and borders, indigenous politics, anthropology of mobilities, roads, development and infrastructure, conservation, religion, and ecology, and institutions and networks. Her current book project focuses on negotiations between Buddhist educational institutions and the Indian state in the context of national borders and geopolitical developments. She has a long-term interest in studying the relation between culture, politics, and ecology, especially in the case of Himalayan animal life, and has published papers on the yak and Himalayan wildlife species in connection with cultural identity and ecotourism. She is working on a collection of essays that undertakes a conceptual reading of contemporary social problems in Northeast India. Her work adopts an interdisciplinary approach in analysis, while remaining grounded in the disciplines of sociology and anthropology.
Books
2020. Imagined Geographies in the Indo-Tibetan Borderlands. Amsterdam University Press.
Awarded 2022 Honorary Mention for the James Fisher Book Prize for first book on the Himalayas by the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies.
Reviews of the book
“Gohain is to be commended for crafting a nuanced and erudite text about a poorly understood community living in a profoundly misrepresented region. Both humanising and very readable, Imagined Geographies is a service to Himalayan studies, a testament to the power of rigorous ethnography and most of all, I imagine, a very useful text for the Monpas of Monyul”. Mark Turin, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research
“Imagined Geographies in the Indo-Tibetan Borderlands provides us with an empirically rich and theoretically sensitive account of the contested place-making in Tawang and the wider Monyul region, located in India’s north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh… Thanks to this masterly account, we have the means to understand how such emancipatory imaginative visions emerge out of Monyul’s frequently unpromising and contested terrain”. Edward Boyle, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
“For borderland studies scholars, this book offers a close reading of how the borderland, with its evolving relations, can be an active space where new identities, social relationships, and political stances are constantly being produced. Scholars of Tibetan studies will find this book valuable for its insights on the production, mediation, and rejection of Tibetan national identity and “civilizing projects”—both in the past and present—on the borderland of cultural Tibet in the southern Himalayas. Lastly, scholars engaged in Indigenous studies will appreciate Gohain’s examination of contested indigeneity in the “postcolonial Indian state” in Asia. Bendi Tso, Journal of Asian Studies
“Gohain’s work is groundbreaking as it does not perceive subaltern consciousness as something that has to be reclaimed but rather as that which has always, already been there. It disrupts the self/other dichotomy as both are imagined as conscious of their own subjectivities and hence does not essentialise the native as an ‘other’”. Priya Bose, Contributions to Indian Sociology
“The book is rich with epistemic innovations in borderland studies and self-reflexive ethnography and is a good start for any student of Himalayan studies.” Noel Mariam George, Tibetscapes
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Book Reviews
Papers in Progress (selected)
Undergraduate courses
Graduate Courses
2002. Honorary Mention for the James Fisher Book Prize for first book on the Himalayas by the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies
2016-2018. Research Associate (non-residential), Department of Anthropology and Sociology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
2015. Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship, British Council, India, London. 30 June – 22 July 2015.
2013 -2015. Sir Ratan Tata Fellowship, Sociology unit, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, India (Position held for 6 months).
2013. German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Research Grant; Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Germany, January – April 2013.
2013. Emory Women’s Club Research Award, 2012-2013, Emory University, U.S.A.
2013. Charles R. Jenkins Award, Certificate for Distinguished Achievement. Lamda Alpha Society, Georgia.
2013. Graduate Fellowship 2007-2008, Institute of Critical International Studies, Emory University, U.S.A.
2009. Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, Wenner-Gren Foundation, U.S.A.
2002-2004. Junior Research Fellowship, University Grants Commission, India.
2000. University Ranker’s Prize – 1st position, B.A. (Hons.) Sociology, University of Delhi.
2000. M.N Srinivas Award for highest score, B.A. Sociology, Miranda House College, University of Delhi.
