School of Social and Political Science

Dr Hemangini Gupta

Senior Lecturer in Gender and Global Politics

woman with shoulder-length black hair.
hemangini.gupta@ed.ac.uk
+44 (0)131 650 4047
6.04
Chrystal Macmillan
15a George Square
Edinburgh
UK
EH8 9LD

Research interests

Gender Politics Research Group International Political Economy Research Group South Asian studies Studies of information and communication technology Work & Economy

data and digitisation; labor; gender; feminist and queer theory; Southern epistemes; multimodality; ethnography

Background

*I am currently not accepting PhD students  

I have a PhD in Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies from Emory University and research and teaching interests in transnational feminisms, capitalist spaces and temporalities, and labor and technology in the South. My book "Experimental Time: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India" is an in-depth ethnography of the political economy and lived experiences of life and labor under startup capitalism in India's technology hub, Bengaluru/Bangalore. 

Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader is a co-written textbook for the field with Drs. Abe Weil, Kelly Sharron, and Carly Thomsen, (Routledge May 2025) and its unique contribution lies in combining seminal texts in the field with contemporary work by feminist scholars who engage, extend and critique those ideas. This is the first textbook with original contributions by Feminist Studies PhDs, and is accompanied by a multimedia website that extends how students learn about feminist ideas.

I am also editing an anthology of writing on the city of Bangalore with Professor Smriti Srinivas at UC Davis, a volume that features activist dispatches, ethnographic nonfiction, and research-based chapters. The volume examines how the place and space of cities in the South offer new analytics and aesthetics through which to theorise the urban and is under contract with Bloomsbury Press.

My current research investigates how data futures are produced through political, infrastructural, ecological and human labor. While we often imagine the "Cloud" as an amorphous and immaterial assemblage, my research moves to locating computing in its material and place-based dimensions. Through fieldwork in the UK and India, I examine the move to building "green" data infrastructures and labor-chains promising fair wages and commitments to "ethical AI" thus querying the ecological costs and entanglements of large scale data projects. I'm particularly interested in asking how we might trace changes in land, air and water that accompany a move to "cloud" economies. 

Works within

Mondays 11 am - 1 pm in Chrystal Macmillan Building 6.04.

Also by appointment via email.

Publications by user content

Publication Research Explorer link
Gupta H, (ed.), Sharron K, (ed.), Thomsen C, (ed.), Weil A, (ed.). Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader. 1st ed. Routledge, 2025. 682 p. doi: 10.4324/9781003341567
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Gupta H. When the office is family: Queering social reproduction under startup capitalism. In Gupta H, Sharron K, Thomsen C, Weil A, editors, Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader. 1st ed. Routledge. 2025 doi: 10.4324/9781003341567
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Gupta H. Section III introduction. In Gupta H, Sharron K, Thomsen C, Weil A, editors, Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader. 1st ed. Routledge. 2025 doi: 10.4324/9781003341567
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Gupta H, Sharron K, Thomsen C, Weil A. Feminist Orientations: New Directions in the Field: Introduction. In Gupta H, Sharron K, Thomsen C, Weil A, editors, Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader. 1st ed. Routledge. 2025. p. 439-448 doi: 10.4324/9781003341567
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Gupta H, Sharron K, Thomsen C, Weil A. Feminist resistance: Mapping multiple futures: Introduction. In Gupta H, Sharron K, Thomsen C, Weil A, editors, Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader. 1st ed. Routledge. 2025. p. 603-607 doi: 10.4324/9781003341567
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Gupta H, Sharron K, Thomsen C, Weil A. Feminist epistemologies and frameworks: Asking questions in feminist ways: Introduction. In Gupta H, Sharron K, Thomsen C, Weil A, editors, Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader. 1st ed. Routledge. 2025. p. 11-18 doi: 10.4324/9781003341567
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Gupta H. Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2024. 328 p.
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Gupta H. Low finance in the world city. In Gidwani V, Goldman M, Upadhya C, editors, Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru. University of Minnesota Press. 2024
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Gupta H. Video essays for experimental times 2024.
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Gupta H, Thomsen C, Ortegren JD, Hanta K, Finley J, Bright K et al. What’s the use of feminist and queer theory? On messy methods, archives, and objects. Feminist Studies. 2023 Mar 16;48(3):713-743. doi: 10.1353/fem.2022.0048
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Gupta H. Vulnerable attachments: Gender and pleasure in India’s ‘Start Up City'. In Desai M, editor, Gender and the Indian City: Revisioning Design and Planning. South Asia Press. 2022
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Gupta H. Profile: Blank noise: Street actions and digital interventions against street sexual harassment in India. In Fernandez NT, Nelson K, editors, Gendered Lives: Global Issues. SUNY Press. 2022
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Gupta H. Feminist multimodality: A retrospective account of an exhibition on speculative urbanism. Multimodality & Society. 2021 Sept 1;1(3):281-299. Epub 2021 Jul 20. doi: 10.1177/26349795211027693
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Gupta, H. What do we talk about when we talk about heat? City & Society. 2021 Apr;33(1):CISO12381. Epub 2021 Mar 31. doi: 10.1111/ciso.12381
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Gupta H. Postcolonial assembly protocols for unnamed automation projects. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. 2020 Nov 7;6(2):1-14. doi: 10.28968/cftt.v6i2.34456
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Gupta H, Medappa K. Nostalgia as affective landscape: Negotiating displacement in the “World City”. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography. 2020 Nov;52(6):1688-1709. Epub 2020 Oct 16. doi: 10.1111/anti.12674
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Gupta H. Testing the Future: Gender and Technocapitalism in Start-Up India. Feminist Review. 2019 Dec 10;123(1):74-88. Epub 2019 Dec 10. doi: 10.1177/0141778919879740
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Gupta H. The corporeal costs of doing what you love. Feminist Media Studies. 2019 Feb 17;19(2):295-297. Epub 2019 Jan 31. doi: 10.1080/14680777.2019.1573530
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Gupta H. In Bengaluru’s gated communities, new forms of civil engagement are emerging. Economic and Political Weekly. 2018 Oct 1;53(39). Epub 2018 Sept 29.
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Gupta H. Modern love. In Nash JC, editor, Love. Schirmer Books. 2016. p. 227-241. (Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Gender).
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Gupta H. Taking action: The desiring subjects of neoliberal feminism in India. Journal of International Women's Studies. 2016 Jan 22;17(1):152-168. 11.
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Gowda R, Gupta H. Tracking and explaining e-participation in India. In Tambouris E, Macintosh A, Glassey O, editors, Electronic Participation: Second International Conference, ePart 2010, Lausanne, Switzerland, August 29 - September 2, 2010. Proceedings. Springer. 2010. p. 66-81. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-15158-3_6
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Hemangini Gupta's Research Explorer profile