Teaching Areas

SC4206: Urban Anthropology
SC3231: Facing the Climate Crisis
SC3223: Visual Culture: Seeing and Representing
SC2221: Humans and Natures

Current Research

My current book project, Drawing Coastlines: Climate Anxieties and the Visual Reinvention of Mumbai’s Shore, looks at how technoscientific images such as plans, weather infographics, fisheries graphs, and surveys shape coasts and coastal futures. They set in place infrastructural interventions, vocabularies of development and conservation, and their lines and dots inscribe material conditions of existence and horizons of loss that entangle life forms that inhabit the shore. The book interlaces comics and text: its multimodal format is an attempt to engage in the politics of its context where words and images combine to create coastal worlds, and to find, through a creative anthropology, openings to build new forms of care in the midst of crisis.

You can see comics from my book manuscript here: https://www.instagram.com/chitradraws/

My second project is on insect worlds, entomological research, and emerging insect industries. Insects are disappearing at a rapid rate and at the same time, insect industries are flourishing. Insect protein is widely regarded as a sustainable alternative to other animal proteins, particularly red meat. My research will look at how these industries are designed and function, how insect agriculture happens, and the forms of insect care that sustain the industry. Another part of this project looks at changing cultures of entomological research, particularly how scientists study the changing behaviors of insects figure them as co-residents in an increasingly precarious world. I am interested in how these two poles—of abundance and scarcity—that mark insect populations, shape our relationship with insects.

During the pandemic, I began working on a short project on dog-fostering in Singapore. Tentatively titled The Singapore Special: Dog-Fostering and Canine-Human Governance, it focuses on the triangular relationship between the foster-care program in Singapore, the dogs in it, and housing policies. It shows how a landscape of housing regulations has recrafted mongrels as “Singapore Specials” in order to secure their belonging in the city. I look at the role that fosterers play in reshaping Singapore Specials as “good” canine citizens in order to gain legitimacy not just in the eyes of the state, but also in the community at large.

Research Interests

Environmental anthropology, visual studies, science and technology studies, cities, design, nonhumans, landscapes, and comics