School of Social and Political Science

Background

I am a political and legal anthropologist and my work explores the relationship between law, violence and justice in the context of far-right politics. 

My book Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities (Duke University Press, 2023) examines how political violence against minorities acts as a catalyst for radical changes in law, public culture, and statecraft. More broadly, my work explores the limits of the politics of exposure to understand majoritarian politics and anti-minority violence in India and beyond. 

Over the last decade, I have been trying to understand the relationship between crowds and power, impunity and state formation, and the law and supremacist regimes as part of a broader effort to grasp the role of violence within liberal democracies. 

My current research examines the everyday life of far-right supremacist regimes, including the life stories of men who join far-right organisations, the dead-ends and limits of far-right politics, the creation of muscular, religious publics, and the relationship between authoritarian rule and public religiosity.