I am an anthropologist and South Asianist interested in materialities, memory, and mapping. While I teach at NUS, I am also a DPhil student in Anthropology at the University of Oxford writing up on the work of objects in the material experience and enactment of 'Singaporean Indian-ness’. Following from this, I particularly enjoy teaching with things and encouraging inquiry through objects and tactile engagement.

My academic career began with the South Asian Studies Programme where I graduated writing an Honours thesis on the visual and spatial memory of violence in the Sikh tradition. Expanding on that interest, my Masters thesis, with the South Asian Institute at Columbia University, focused on the imagination of ‘Punjab as Sikh’ through the memorialisation of historical sites, Sikh narratives grounded in the landscape, and employment of cartographic representations in Indian Punjab.

Across Punjab and Singapore, I am essentially interested in how living with things enact meaning, identity, and belonging. I am keen to explore these ideas beyond academia and have so far done so through theatre and museum-making. My works include Tekka Food Steps (2021); Rasanai: an invitation to appreciate (2021); Thamizhachi: a digital museum of Tamil women under construction (2021); Coffee Maker (2019); and Sikhs of Serangoon (2016). I see these works as extensions of my practice in teaching and in thinking with things.