Name: Anu Sabhlok
Designation: Professor
Email: anusabhlok@iisermohali.ac.in
Office: #4F2, Academic Block 1
Websites
Google Scholar
www.migrantlabourers.wordpress.com
https://utopiancities.wordpress.com/project-investigators/
Curriculum Vitae
Education Doctor of Philosophy (Dual Degree), 2007, Departments of Geography and Women’s Studies, Pennsylvania State University Masters of Science, 2001, Department of Architecture, Pennsylvania State University Bachelors of Architecture, 1995, Department of Architecture, School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi
Employment
Associate Professor (2016-continuing),
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali
Assistant Professor (2010-2016),
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali
Assistant Professor, tenure track (2006-2009),
University of Louisville, KY
Instructor (2005-2006),
Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University
Teaching Assistant (1999-2002, 2004-2005),
Departments of Geography and Architecture, Pennsylvania State University
Research Assistant (2003-2004),
Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University
Research Associate(1996-1997),
A:rei (Architecture, Research Education and Information), Chandigarh
Research Focus My research broadly is in the domain of feminist theory, urban and labour geography and the emerging area of critical infrastructure studies. The regional context of my research is South Asia and the questions I address are of global significance. I look at how social and spatial relationships are mutually constituted. My current research is an ethnographic study of seasonal migrants working on road construction sites in the upper Himalayas. Drawing from long term field research, this study highlights the contradictions inherent in the discourses surrounding ‘development’; particularly as it relies on precarious work by migrant labourers. I have also investigated how gendered meanings and social relations shift across the multiple contexts that migrants inhabit. In the recent paper, published in Geoforum, I argue that the emerging area of Infrastructural Studies needs to integrate labour as central to infrastructural assemblages. In the same paper, I revisited Spivak’s question on ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ to suggest that academic engagement with the subaltern needs to be about ‘making space’ for alternative voices. I am currently more than halfway through with the book manuscript titled Road Chronicles: ethnographic account of the Indo-Tibetan Border Roads.
When I am not conducting fieldwork in the upper Himalayas, I engage in urban research in the Chandigarh tri-city area. Chandigarh is independent India’s first planned city designed in the modernist style by Le Corbusier. It is an union territory and the State Capital for the States of Punjab and Harayana and is therefore flanked by the two satellite towns, Panchkula (Haryana) and Mohali (Punjab). My work investigates the gendered experiences in this planned city and has more recently paid attention to how infrastructures (or lack thereof) creates uneven geographies that are territorial, intersectional and relate to broader regional assemblages.
Teaching HSS301 Construction of Identity and Knowledge HSS304 Visual Art- Studio practice and theory IDC203 Introduction to Earth Science HSS302 Concepts of Space and Time in the Humanities and Social Sciences HSS601 Identity, Power and Place HSS602 Social Theory – concepts and debates HSS603 Advanced qualitative research design and methods HSS622 Cities- Urban theory and laboratory HSS623 Bodily encounters – Mobility, migrancy and movement HSS624 Understanding Cultures – using laboratory, fieldwork and archives
Selected Publications For journal articles Sabhlok, A. 2020 "‘Walking with the Subalterns’: Infrastructural imaginations and ways of dialogic interpretations and representations." Geoforum. 117:71-79
Sabhlok, A. 2017. Main Bhi to Hindostaan Hoon: Gender and the Nation-State in India’s Border Roads Organization. Gender, Place and Culture. 24(12):1711-1728
Sabhlok, A.; Hoiwan C.; Mishra, Y. 2015. Narratives of health and well-being in the lives of migrant labour working in the upper Himalayas. Economic and Political Weekly 50(51): 71-78
Sabhlok, A. 2010. Nationalism in relief. Geoforum. 41(5):743-751
Marshall, G and Sabhlok, A. 2009. “Not for the sake of work”: ultra-religious women’s spatial negotiations in Turkey and India. Women Studies International Forum 32(6)
Sabhlok, A. 2008. Integrated Disaster Management: an incentive for interstate cooperation amongst states in India. Man and Development: journal of the Center for Research in Rural and Industrial Development 30(4)
283 Collective. 2008. What’s Just: Afterthoughts on the Summer Institute for the Geographies of Justice. Antipode 40(5)
For Book
Truelove, Y. and Sabhlok, A. Gendered Infrastructures: Exploring dialectics of space, scale and identity. Gender, Feminisms and Geography Series. West Virginia University Press. (Submitted, Under review and under contract)For Chapters in Edited Volumes
Sabhlok, A. 2019. "Seasonal migration and the working-class laboring body in India." Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration. Edward Elgar Publishing,Sabhlok, A. 2015. Gender and the city in Sood, A and Upadhyay, S. (Ed.) Sociology of Urban Transformations. e-pathshala project MHRD. http://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/ahl.php?csrno=33#
Sabhlok, A. 2015. Right to the City in Sood, A and Upadhyay, S. (Ed.) Sociology of Urban Transformations. e-pathshala project MHRD. http://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/ahl.php?csrno=33#
Sabhlok, A. 2015. Planned Cities and Company towns in Sood, A and Upadhyay, S. (Ed.) Sociology of Urban Transformations. e-pathshala project MHRD. http://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/ahl.php?csrno=33#
Sabhlok, A. 2014. “Main Bhi To HindustaanHoon” : Gender and Nation in India’s Border Roads Organization. In Datta, A (ed.) Re Orienting Gender Geographies of Resistance, Agency, Violence and Desire in Asia. Delhi: RK Books.
Sabhlok, A and Sood, C. (forthcoming) Sleeping with the Enemy: Inhabiting the Humanities in a Science Institute in Gordon, L. (Ed.) Transcending Disciplinary Decadence. Routledge. (accepted 2013)
Brydon-Miller, M; Kral, M; Maguire, P; Noffke, S and Sabhlok, A. 2010. Participatory Action Research in Denzin, N (ed.) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage publications.
Sabhlok, A and Newton, J. 2010. Middle-East: Chapter 10. Address Earth, a large format atlas project..American Printing House for the Blind.
Book Reviews
2013. Program in Gujarat: Hindu Nationalism and anti-Muslim violence in India by Parves Ghassim-Facchandi. Gender Place and Culture: journal of feminist geography 20(6): 829-832
2009. Voices from the Classroom: A collaborative review of Pamela Moss and Karen Falconer Al-Hindi (eds.), Feminisms in Geography: Rethinking Space, Place and knowledge’s. Thirdspace: Journal of Feminist Theory and Culture 9(1)2
2008. Disaster Management in the wake of a flood by Shaikh Iftikhar Ahmed. Punjab Geographer 4:93-95
2005. Gender in the Hindu Nation by Paola Bachetta. Journal of International Women’s studies 7 (1): 110-112
Manuscripts Under Review/in Preparation
Truelove, Y. and Sabhlok, A. Gendered Infrastructures: Exploring dialectics of space, scale and identity. Gender, Feminisms and Geography Series. West Virginia University Press. (Submitted, Under review and under contract)
Sharma P, Gandhi K and Sabhlok A. Queering Utopia: Pride Parades in Modernist Chandigarh. Urban Geography (Revisions submitted)
Sabhlok, A. Road Chronicles: An ethnographic account of the Indo-Tibetan Border Roads. Book length monograph. (In preparation)
Other Research Outcomes
Sabhlok, A., Sarma, K, Malik, J. 2015. Road Chronicles: an ode to the labourer. A photo installation at Alliance Francaise de Delhi from October 10th-15th, 2015
Sabhlok, A., Malik, J. 2011. Shifting Grids. A mixed media installation at International Critical Geography Group conference. Boukenhiem Campus, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany
Sabhlok, A. Chandigarh: Paradigm Shifts. Published on www.utopiancities.wordpress.com
Research outreach through my blog: www.migrantlabourers.wordpress.com
Research Projects
2015-16 AHRC_ICHR Research Networking Project Grant for ‘Learning from the Utopian City: An International network on alternative histories of India’s urban futures. UK PI AyonaDatta, University of Leeds, Indian PI: AnuSabhlok. AHRC contribution: GBP 30,000. ICHR contribution: INR 3 lakhs
2013-2015 Research Grant for project entitled ‘Constructing the nation: An ethnographic account of migrant labour on the Indo-Tibetan Border Road.’ Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR). INR 7 lakhs.
2014 Antipode International Workshop Grant. For “Caste, Class, Race, Gender, and Indigeneity: Placing Subalternity” organized along with colleagues at Indiana University. $12,000
Position at IISER Mohali
2019 – March 2021. Dean Students
2016- 2021 HoD, HSS
2012-2016 Convener, HSS
2010-2015 Convener, Landscape Committee
2011-2013 IISER Mohali Hostel Warden
2010-2015 Member, Library Committee
2012-present Member, Committee against Sexual Harassment
2012-present Member, Outreach Programs Committee
2010-present Member, Ethics Committee
2010-2012 Member, IISER Film Committee
2012-2015 Member, Health Committee
Position outside IISER Mohali
I serve on the editorial boards of the following international journals and book series:
Geoforum
Dialogues in Human Geography
Geopolitics
Gender, Feminism, and Geography Book Series. West Virginia University Press.
Achievements
2017: Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship
2006: Faculty travel award for the study of women and global issues. Univ. of Louisville
2005: College of Liberal Arts Dissertation Research Award. Pennsylvania State University
2005: Association of American Geographers Dissertation Research Award
2005: Society of Women Geographers National Fellowship, United States
2005: E. Miller Award, second prize. Dept. of Geography. Penn State University
2005: Institute of the Arts and Humanities Graduate Student Summer Residency, Penn State Univ.
2001: Alma Heinz and August Louis Pohland Graduate Student Fellowship, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Penn State University