Lipika Kamra

Dr. Lipika Kamra researches on democracy and development in India from an ethnographic perspective. Her research and teaching interests crisscross political and social anthropology, gender studies, international development, comparative politics, and South Asian studies. She completed a doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2016, and has previously taught at Georgetown University’s campus in Qatar.

Her current book project examines counterinsurgency, statemaking, and development in modern India. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research on the Jungle Mahals of West Bengal, she examines how counterinsurgency recurs as a primary driver of colonial and postcolonial statemaking in regions associated today with the Maoist insurgency. In this book, Kamra pays particular attention to the relationships between state actors and rural women that emerge in a counterinsurgency context, and how women navigate citizenship and development in rural India. This book draws on her doctoral research, and parts of it have been published in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.

Kamra has also been conducting research on two new projects. The first project, funded by a WhatsApp Misinformation and Social Science Award, examines the role of digital media in shaping everyday politics. It is a collaborative project with Dr. Philippa Williams (Queen Mary University, London). For more details, see the project website:

https://www.qmul.ac.uk/geog/research/research-projects/socialmedia

Kamra’s second project looks at women voters in India, and how they relate to the ideas and processes of democracy.