I’m happy to have been awarded the Whitbeck Graduate Dissertator Award 2024 from the Department of Geography at UW-Madison to support me through the final stages of writing my PhD dissertation titled, “Infrastructural Entanglements: Money, Mediation, and Materiality in Transnational India”. Ray Hughes Whitbeck, Professor of Geography
I published a short essay from PhD dissertation in Ala: A Kerala Studies Blog. Many thanks to Shilpa Menon and the Editors of Ala for thoughtful comments and feedback that have significantly improved this essay. Read the full essay here, https://alablog.in/issues/68/gulf-houses-to-nri-flats/ As you exit the “world’s first green airport” in Nedumbassery on the outskirts of […]
I had the opportunity to participate in the panel titled, “Global Development, Speculative Urbanism, and Infrastructure: Critical Approaches to Capital and Difference“, at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in Honolulu, HI on April 18, 2024. Many thanks to the organizers, David Fernando Bachrach and Naomi Hazarika, for organizing it and to the […]
Below are images from ethnographic fieldwork conducted with research participants involved in Dubai’s real estate industry, including diaspora Indian home buyers and investors, real estate brokers, sales and marketing executives, and banking sector officials.
I had the opportunity to participate in the Symposium titled “Material as Method: New Histories of the Built Environment” at the Annual Conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in October 2023. Many thanks to Ateya Khorakiwala (Columbia University) & Curt Gambetta (Dartmouth College) for organizing and facilitating the same. Please find the […]
During my fieldwork in Kerala from September 2022 to August 2023, I was affiliated to the Center for Development Studies (CDS) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala as a PhD Research Scholar under the guidance of Prof. J. Devika. The campus of CDS was designed by the late Laurie Baker. Many thanks to Prof. Devika for her guidance […]
I had the opportunity to participate in American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Junior Fellows Annual Conference at New Delhi in December 2022. Many thanks to AIIS for organizing the same and faculty mentors Prof. Geeta Patel, Prof. Sanjam Ahluwalia, Prof. Sumathi Ramaswamy, and Prof. Radhika Govindrajan for their insightful comments and feedback on participant’s […]
Below are images from dissertation fieldwork in Kerala, India where I followed the trail of sand for concrete construction along its production chain from building construction sites in Kochi city, Kerala’s commercial capital, to its sources in rivers and stone quarries in the Western Ghat mountain ranges in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Siddharth Menon 