ANNA STIRR, Director
Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology, Columbia University
Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies
Email: stirr@hawaii.edu
Anna Stirr’s research focuses on South Asia, particularly on Nepal and the Himalayan region. She is currently working on two projects that deal with love, intimacy, and politics in Nepal. The first looks at improvised dohori question-answer songs as culturally intimate, gendered expressions of ideas of nation and heritage, within a cycle of migration and media circulation that spans the globe. The second chronicles the history of Nepal’s politically oppositional “progressive song” from the 1960s to the present, with a focus on ideas of love, development, and communist thought as interrelated ways of imagining a better future. Articles from these projects have appeared in various journals and edited volumes. Anna also maintains an active research interest in the relationship between music, religion, politics and public culture in South Asia and the Himalayas. Along with teaching and researching about music, Anna is also active as a performer. After a bachelor’s degree in western classical flute performance, she has studied Hindustani classical bansuri flute with Steve Gorn and Jeevan Ale, and has learned the folk style of bansuri performance through musical interaction with many Nepali performers during her fieldwork. As a singer, she has studied the Hindustani classical tradition with Prabhu Raj Dhakal in Nepal and Ustad Mehboob Nadeem in London, and she learned Nepali folk and dohori song as she learned the flute styles, in the informal oral tradition. Her formal instruction in Nepali folk music has been with Khadga Bahadur Budha Magar on the madal drum, and she believes that knowledge of percussion provides a firm foundation for a broader grasp of any musical style. She is working on compiling and translating the Nepali folk music teaching materials created by her teachers as well as the late musicologist Subi Shah. Prior to joining the UH faculty she held postdoctoral positions in ethnomusicology and anthropology at Oxford University, and in Asian Studies at Leiden University. As a teacher, Anna is excited to introduce students to the diverse worlds of Asian performing arts, and to broader themes in Asian cultures and history, from various perspectives in the social sciences and humanities.
NANDINI CHANDRA
Ph.D., Centre for Linguistics & English, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
Professor, Department of English
Email: nc8@hawaii.edu
I teach genre-based courses on popular culture and literature to sophomores, as well as foundational, theory based-classes for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, using pop-culture to teach theory and theory to understand popular forms and everyday life. I am currently in the process of completing two manuscripts: Superfluous Life:Vinod Kumar Shukla’s Surplus Population and Literary Lumpens: Lumpenism and Lumpen-Aesthetics in North India. My areas of interest include Marxism, Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Literary Modernism, Gender Studies, Comics and Graphic Novels, Childhood Studies, South Asian Film and Literature.
MONISHA DAS GUPTA
Ph.D. in Sociology, Brandeis University
Professor, Ethnic Studies & Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Email: dasgupta@hawaii.edu
Background
I grew up in Kolkata, India, and came to the United States for graduate studies after working for a local newspaper for a few years on graduating with my bachelor’s degree in Geography. My trajectory in the academy has taken me through different disciplines, sensitizing me to the distinct discipline-based questions as well as the overlaps in issues and methods. My focus on migration steered me toward interdisciplinarity. Drawing on my own positive experiences in school with seminar-style teaching and caring teachers who believed in me, I strive to create a similar college experience for my UHM students so that they can thrive intellectually and interpersonally.
Research
I study migrant-led movements for social justice. I approach this subject from a feminist and critical ethnic studies framework. My research methods are qualitative. It has contributed to developing transnational feminist approaches to migration. I specialize in the South Asian diaspora in the United States, and, over time, my research interests in movements for labor, racial and gender justice have expanded to my working with many other ethnic groups. All my research is closely tied to community-based organizing. I involve graduate and advanced undergraduate students in my research. My current research project focuses on anti-deportation organizing in the United States.
Community Engagement
I am deeply committed to labor and migrant rights. I am involved with UNITE HERE! Local 5, the labor union which organizes the immigrant-majority workers in the hotel industry. Since 2010, I have worked closely with the Hawaiʻi Coalition for Immigrant Rights to educate our communities on the issues our migrant communities face and their needs. I have strong ties with several immigrant rights organizations in the Los Angeles area, and maintain connections with the organizations on the continent about which I write. It has been very rewarding to build these crucial bridges between the academy, and our communities.
MONICA GHOSH
Ph.D. in English, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
South Asia Studies Librarian and Public Services Division Head
Email: monicag@hawaii.edu
Monica Ghosh has been an academic librarian since 1988. A graduate of the University of Michigan Master of Information and Library Studies, she began her career in library instruction and general reference at Michigan State University and moved to the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UHM) in 1991 as a reference librarian. A few years later, she was appointed as the South Asia Studies Librarian, and is the only librarian who has also served twice as the Director of the Center for South Asian Studies at UHM. While Chair of the renowned Asia Collection at UHM Library, she received her PhD in English. After serving twice as Interim Associate University Librarian for Planning, Administration and Personnel, she was appointed Interim University Librarian in August 2017-2019. Her professional associations include the Committee on South Asia Libraries and Documentation (CONSALD) and the Association for Asian Studies (AAS)–she has presented her scholarship at the annual meeting of AAS and at the Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Her research interests include South Asians writing in English; literature of the South Asian diaspora; representations of South Asians in U.S. popular culture; and the Anglo-Indian and Chinese communities of India.
PALLAVI GUPTA
Ph.D. in Geography & Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Instructor, Department of Geography
Email: pallavi@hawaii.edu
I am a feminist political geographer, committed to studying how hierarchies are created within human societies. Over ten years of working with leading feminist non-profits and community-based organizations in India, I am deeply engaged with questions related to non-discrimination, gender, and social justice. As a practitioner, along with my team members, I anchored gender-justice programs for diverse audiences including lawyers, corporate employees, young students, security personnel, and employees of nonprofits. I have formal training in law, social work, and geography, and, in my current work, critically examine the experiences of cleaning workers in India.
My research spans the disciplines of labor, legal, feminist, and political geographies and draws upon frameworks from Black Studies, Dalit Studies, and Infrastructure Studies. In doing so, it examines how space, political economy, and social structures combine to exacerbate the experience of discrimination for marginalized groups. In my doctoral work, I engaged with these questions through a case study of the Indian Railways, using extensive qualitative methods among cleaning workers in Hyderabad, India. My dissertation chapters have been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies and Annals of the American Association of Geographers.
KAREN KADOHIRO LAUER
MA in Anthropology and MLISc, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Hawaiian and Pacific Collections Archivist / Russian Studies Librarian
Email: kkadohir@hawaii.edu
Karen Kadohiro Lauer has been an academic librarian and archivist since 2015. She is a graduate of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Master of Library Information Sciences and Anthropology programs. She has conducted research on collections from Tonga, India, and Russia, as well as on archival collections related to Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. Her primary interests lie in exploring new ways to improve access to the extensive Asia and Pacific collections of Hamilton Library. Her research interests include the cultural geography of South Asia and the impact of culture on human biology. Her professional associations include the Association of Asian Studies (AAS), American Library Association (ALA), Society of American Archivists (SAA), Association of Hawaiʻi Archivists (AHA), and the Hawaiʻi Library Association (HLA).
MARI MARTINEZ
Ph.D Candidate in Performance Studies, Department of Theatre and Dance, UH Mānoa
Coordinator, Center for South Asian Studies
Email: mm2046@hawaii.edu
Mari Martinez is currently a second year PhD in Performance Studies in Theater and Dance. She received her BFA from the University of Michigan in Performing Arts Technology and her MA in Performance Studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. As part of her MA Thesis she created an educational website (blackbox.academy) covering topics ranging from racial bias, surveillance and mis and disinformation in technology. Her dissertation research focuses on the intersectionality of performance, political science and death. She has done live performances ranging from a live interactive 3D performance with assistance from the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s LAVA lab, and live avant garde politically charged performances dealing with racism, and disparity. Her wide range of research includes Butoh, technology’s impact on eastern and South Asian religions, and artificial intelligence. She studies Bollywood dance and film with a deep love for Lata Mangeskar, and Shah Rukh Khan. She studies under a Buddhist monk who focuses resources on helping children throughout Myanmar.
SANJEEV SRIDHARAN
Professor, Director of the Office for the Study of Healthcare Policy
Sanjeev Sridharan is Professor of Health Policy Evaluation at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He grew up in Mumbai, his parents are from Kerala. He is married to an Okinawan Hawaiian from Kalihi. Previously he was the Country Lead, Learning Systems and Systems Evaluation at the India Country Office of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to this position,
Sanjeev was Director of the Evaluation Centre for Complex Health Interventions at St. Michaels Hospital and Associate Professor at the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He is a former Associate Editor of the American Journal of Evaluation and has been on boards of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, New Directions for Evaluation and Evaluation and Program Planning. Presently, he is an Evaluation Advisor to the United Nations Internal Oversight Services—as part of his role in the advisory committee, he advises on evaluation designs for evaluations conducted by United Nations organizations. The focus of his work is on operationalizing the concept of sustainable impacts in evaluations. His evaluation interest is also on exploring the impact of Arts and Dance on Brain health. He is collaborating with Dancing with Parkinson’s to explore the mechanisms by which Dance disrupts the progression of Parkinson’s disease.