Svati Shah

Dr. Svati Shah is an Associate Professor in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with adjunct appointments in Anthropology and Afro-American Studies. They are a feminist anthropologist specializing in political economy, queer feminist theory, and gender dynamics within South Asian contexts.

• Research focuses on sexuality, gender, migration, and caste capitalism in India.
• Currently working on the genealogy of queer movements in India, particularly the interplay between urban/rural sexuality politics and nativist nationalism.
• Authored Street Corner Secrets: Sex, Work and Migration in the City of Mumbai (2014), analyzing sex work as labor migration mediated by caste and urbanization.
• Recent seminar titled The Art of Ethnographic Failure explored critiques of material inequality in Indian LGBTQIA+ movements, emphasizing ethnographic methodology and poststructuralist theory.
• Affiliated with the Centre for Women's and Gender Research and the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen (Norway).