We are excited to announce two keynote speakers for our upcoming workshops at Shiv Nadar University (Delhi) and Cornell University (Ithaca).
December 13 2024: Keynote by Professor Veena Das in New Delhi
Veena Das is a research professor at the Johns Hopkins University and a leading figure in anthropology. She is known for her groundbreaking ethnographic research on collective violence, and urban transformations. Before her retirement, she was the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology. Her work explores how ethnography generates concepts; how we might treat philosophical and literary traditions from India and other regions as generative of theoretical and practical understanding of the world; how to render the texture and contours of everyday life; and the way the everyday and the event are joined together in the making of the normal and the critical. Veena Das’s notable publications include Life and Words (2006) and Affliction (2015). Her most recent book, Slum Acts (2022) analyses how crumbling infrastructures and pervasive violence in Delhi’s poorer neighborhoods erode trust, sows suspicions, and exhausts the capacity for care. Veena Das taught at the Delhi School of Economics for more than thirty years. For more details, visit her profile.
May 7 2025: Keynote by Professor Elizabeth Povinelli at Cornell University
Elizabeth A. Povinelli is an anthropologist, critical theorist and filmmaker, and is currently Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Her work intersects anthropology, philosophy, and critical theory, focusing on the governance of life and death in late liberalism. She is a key figure in the development of critical theory of settler late liberalism and its aftershocks, Povinelli’s research interests are deeply rooted in the exploration of Indigenous Australian lifeworlds, with a particular focus on the interaction between social norms, state power, and individual subjectivities. Povinelli is recognized for her critical contributions to the theory of “geontopower,” a concept she developed to describe the power relations that shape life and non-life within late liberal forms of governance. Her innovative work has earned her numerous accolades, including the Cultural Studies Association’s 2014 First Book Prize for her influential monograph, Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Povinelli is one of the founding members of the Karrabing Film Collective. For more details, visit her profile.
