Academic Qualifications

Career Profile

Areas of Specialization

Modern South Asian history, Transnational migrations from South Asia, Making of modern subjectivities

and Regional modernities in South Asia

Recognitions and Awards

ESRC-ICSSR Visiting Fellowship to the University of Sussex, UK, 2010-2011

Junior Research Fellowship (UGC) in History (1998)

Publications (Selectively)

Books and Special Journal Issues:

1.

Dreaming Mobility and Buying Vulnerability: Overseas Recruitment Practices and its Discontents in India, New Delhi: Routledge (forthcoming, 2011) [Co-authors; S. Irudaya Rajan & M.S. Jayakumar]

2.

Anjuru Varshathe Keralam: Chila Arivadayalangal (Malayalam) [Five Hundred Years of Kerala: A Cultural Study], 1999, Tapasam/D C Books, Changanasserry, third edition, 2011. [Co-editors: Scaria Zacharia & N. Vijayamohanan Pillai

3.

Edited and Introduced, Tapasam Journal for Kerala Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3 & 4, Special issue on ‘Subjectivity, Self and Marginality’, 2007.

4.

Edited and Introduced, a Special issue on ‘History, Representations and Ambivalence’, Tapasam Journal for Kerala Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1-4, 2010.

Journal Articles / Chapters in Books / Refereed Working Papers

1.

“To Survive or Flourish? Minority Rights and Syrian Christian Community Assertions in the 20th Century Travancore/Kerala,” History and Sociology of South Asia, 5(2), 2011, pp. 103-128; (Co-author: J. Devika)

2.

“Outside and Inside the Nation: Migrant Narratives and the Making of a Productive Citizen,” in Discourses: Social Sciences & Humanities, 1(1), 2010, pp. 1-16

3.

“Overseas Recruitment in India: Structures, Practices and Remedies,” Working Paper 421, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, 2010, (Co-authors: S. Irudaya Rajan and M.S. Jayakumar)

4.

“Land, Labour and Migrations: Understanding Kerala’s Economic Modernity,” CDS Working Paper 420, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, 2009.

5.

“The Alluring Music of Labour: Migrations and the Recreation of Syrian Christian Community in Kerala,” Tapasam Journal for Kerala Studies, 2(3&4), 2007, pp. 501-38.

6.

“Modernity, Development and Discourse: Situating Migration to Malabar,” in Rattanlal Hangloo and A. Murali (eds), New Themes in Indian History: Art, Politics, Gender, Environment and Culture, New Delhi: Black & White, 2007, pp. 468-83.

7.

“Migrant narratives: Reading Literary Representations of Christian Migration in Kerala, 1920-1970,” in Indian Economic and Social History Review, 40(2), 2006, pp. 227-55.

8.

“De-scribing Self: Reading Migrant Novels on Malabar Migration”, Tapasam Journal for Kerala Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, October 2005, pp. 327-54, 109-18.

9.

“Notions of Civility and Wilderness in the Ayurvedic Great Triad”, Calicut University Research Journal, Vol.3, Issue.2, February 2003, pp. 109-23.

10.

“Histories of Elamkulam: Some Reconsiderations” (Malayalam), in V J Varghese , et al.(ed), Anjuru Varshathe Keralam: Chila Arivadayalangal, pp. 136-53.

11.

“Looking Beyond the Emigration Act 1983: Some Revisiting the Recruitment Practices in India,” in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.), Governance and Labour Migration: India Migration Report 2010, New Delhi: Routledge, 2010.

Research Projects (jointly)

1.

“Governance of Labour Migration in India,” research project funded by the International Labour Organization (ILO), October 2007 to June 2009.

2.

“Beyond the Existing Structures: Revamping Overseas Recruitment System in India,” Research conducted for the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA), Government of India, New Delhi, September 2007 to January 2009.

3.

“Transnationalisation, Migration and Transformation: Multi-Level Analysis of Migrant Transnatioanlism,” research project on migrations from the Indian Punjab to the U.K, funded by the European Commission, March 2008 to March 2011. See for details the web site: (http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/kasvlait/projektit/transnet/index.php)

4.

“Childhood vacant of Parentage: Labour Migration, Transnational Households and Children,” research project on the impact of migration on children, funded by Rockefeller foundation, June 2008 to December 2009.

5.

Project for preparing a comprehensive background document for National Migration Policy for India; document submitted to the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs in March 2009.

Recent Research Presentations and Seminars (international)

1.

“From the Pristine to the Peccant: Agricultural Expansion, Migration and the Production of New Subjects in South India, 1920-70,”and “He Selected Me: Migration, Marriage and Desertion of Wives in Indian Punjab,” at the International Conference on ‘Assessing the Complexities of South Asian Migration’, at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 19-21 May 2011.

2.

“Assets Far Away: Transnational Properties and its Discontents in Indian Punjab,” IMI Brown Bag Seminar Series, International Migration Institute, University of Oxford, 9 February 2011.

3.

“Transnational Discontents: Marriage, Property and Migrant Transnationalism in Indian Punjab,” Social Science Seminar, University of Bielefeld, Germany, 7 February 2011.

4.

“Transnationalism, Informality and Social Licitness: Migrations from Eastern Punjab,” Sussex Migration Research Seminars, University of Sussex, UK, 3 February 2011.

5.

“Reclaiming civilization and building the "Canaan": agricultural migration and its conflicting rationalities in South India, 1920-1970,” South Asian Seminar Series, Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, 2 February 2011.

6..

“Ruptures of nostalgia: Migration, marriage and the Punjabi transnational Public,” Open Symposium on Transnational Relations in the Contemporary World, University of Tampere, Finland, 31 January 2011.

7.

“From the Pristine to the Peccant: Agricultural Expansion, Migration and the Production of New Subjects in South India, 1920-70,” Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies Seminar Series, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 26 January 2011.

8.

“Modernity in Translation: Land Labour and Migrations in Kerala, South India, 1900-70,” CWEH Seminar Series, centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex, 28 January 2011.

9.

“Moving Across Borders: Migrations from Eastern Punjab and its Social Licitness,” Seminar Programme, School of Social Sciences, University of Northumbria, Newcastle , UK, 19 January 2011.

10.

“He Selected Me: Migration, Marriage and Desertion of Wives in Indian Punjab,” CSAS Seminar Series, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK, 13 January 2011.

11.

“Migration as a Transnational Enterprise: Emigrations from Eastern Punjab and Socially Licit Rationalities,” at the international conference on “Globalising Asia” organised by Nordic Association for South Asian Studies in collaboration with the University of Helsinki, 27-29 May 2010, at Helsinki, Finland.