معرفی
Tarini Bedi is a LAS Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago, affiliated with the Department of Urban Planning and Policy and the Field Museum of Chicago. She holds an Adjunct Curator role at the Field Museum and currently serves as Program Director for Cultural Anthropology at the US National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research focuses on urbanization, globalization, politics, gender relations, religion, and infrastructure in South and Southeast Asia, with a particular emphasis on India and Singapore. She leads the Mobilities and Methods Lab (MML) and has published extensively on urban mobilities, labor, and political dynamics in global cities.
Education: PhD in Anthropology (UIC, 2009); MA in Anthropology (UIC, 2004); MA in Political Science (McGill, 1998); BA in Social Sciences/Theater (Bennington, 1995); FYBA (St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, India).
Research Interests: Urbanization processes in the Global South; mobilities and borders; infrastructure and built environments; gender and political mobilization; ethnographic pedagogy and methodology. She investigates how urban populations navigate exclusion, economic livelihoods, and social policies in contexts like Mumbai, Singapore, and the India-Pakistan border.
Key Awards: 2023 Victor Turner Prize (2nd Prize) for Mumbai Taximen. Her work is supported by NSF, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and American Institute of Indian Studies. She co-edits the Anthropology of Work Review and serves on the Editorial Board of the Association of Asian Studies.
Grants and Leadership: Current NSF Program Director role (2023–2025) shapes her engagement with funding initiatives. She mentors doctoral students in diverse urban studies topics and advocates for accessible ethnographic practices.
Labs/Teams: Director of the Mobilities and Methods Lab, exploring urban mobilities through interdisciplinary approaches. Active in collaborative projects like the Kartarpur Corridor study on infrastructure and border ecologies.
