Dr Dyotana Banerjee has a PhD in Politics from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, and an MSc in International Development from The University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include politics of urban transformations, remaking of city spaces, caste politics, and urban migration in India. Her doctoral dissertation, titled A Caste-Coded City: Mobility and Marginalization in the Space Politics of Ahmedabad, looks at how caste operates as one of the principal axes of urbanisation in post-liberalisation Ahmedabad, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat. It is an ethnographic study that focuses on the political and cultural production of two distinct kinds of pre and post-liberalisation neighbourhoods that belong to the Vankar, Rohit and Garoda castes. Dr Banerjee has published her research in international peer-reviewed journals such as Contemporary South Asia, Critical Asian Studies and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. She has also published opinion pieces in The Wire, The Quint and South Asia Journal.

Research

Dr Dyotana Banerjee’s research interests include politics of urban transformations, remaking of city spaces, caste politics, and urban migration in India.

Publications

Journal Articles:

Banerjee, Dyotana, ”Caste, gig economy and youth; the resurgence of a new age caste politics in urban Gujarat”; South Asian Society and Culture, 15 (2),  231-246, 2024,Taylor & Francis. doi:10.1080/19472498.2024.2346867 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19472498.2024.2346867

Banerjee, Dyotana, and Mehta Mona G. “Caste and capital in the remaking of Ahmedabad.” Contemporary South Asia, 25, no. 2 182-195, 2017, Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2017.1329278

Online Journal Articles/Commentaries:

Banerjee, Dyotana, “Pandemic rituals and compliant urban neighbours: Middle-class politics in Bangalore’’, Urban Now, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Aug 2020 https://www.ijurr.org/the-urban-now/pandemic-rituals-and-compliant-urban-neighbours/

Banerjee, Dyotana, “Reading a Dalit movement through social media; limits and possibilities”, Critical Asian Studies, Aug 2019, Taylor & Francis. https://criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2019/7/31/201916-dyotana-banerjee-reading-a-dalit-movement-through-social-media-limits-and-possibilities

Banerjee, Dyotana, and Das Noyonika, “Moralizing middle class and the Choked response to Demonetization”, in South Asia Journal, Commentary, June 6, 2020. http://southasiajournal.net/moralizing-middle-class-and-the-choked-response-to-demonetization/

Book Chapters:

Banerjee, Dyotana ‘Urban political practices and self-making in the neighbourhood: Ethnographic insights from Citizenship Act protest in Ahmedabad’ in Small-scale Activism: Community Transformations through Grassroots Projects, 2026, Vernon Press (Forthcoming)

Sharma, Ishita and Banerjee, Dyotana, Lights, Camera, Election: Everyday Image Shaping of Women Celebrity Politicians in Electoral Campaigns in Mediated Cultures, Political Discourses, and the Celebrity: Perspectives from India, 2026, Bloomsbury Publishing. https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/mediated-cultures-political-discourses-and-the-celebrity-9781350466227/

Banerjee, Dyotana, and Ghosh, Debasmita. “Gerontocracy and Populist Politics in India: Familial Tropes, Ageless Symbolism, and Nativist Rhetoric.” In Handbook of Aging, Health and Public Policy: Perspectives from Asia, pp. 1-17, 2024, Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-981-16-1914-4_227-1

Banerjee, Dyotana, and Dasgupta, Abhijit. “Hindu Nationalist Anxiety Around Its Feminine ‘Own’ and the ‘Other’’ in Interdisciplinary Reflections on South Asian Transitions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.  https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/hindu-nationalist-anxiety-around-its-feminine-own-and-the-other/26017310

Media Articles:

Banerjee, Dyotana, “Caste, class and populist political anxieties in ‘Paatal Lok’”, The Wire, May 23, 2020.  Thewire.in

Banerjee, Dyotana, “Thappad: defying patriarchy without dismantling families?”, Countercurrents.org, May 12, 2020.

Ingole, Prashant and Banerjee, Dyotana, “Coronavirus and caste: is our response to the pandemic casteist?”, The Quint, Mar. 21, 2020.

Banerjee, Dyotana, “Savarna middle class and Article 15: Puncturing the ‘politics’ in the political”, in Countercurrents.org, Jul. 9, 2019.

Teaching Modules

Some of the courses that Dr Dyotana Banerjee has taught in the last three years include Introduction to Politics, Political Thought, Political Economy of India, and Politics and Theories of Urbanisation.