Shweta Rani is currently a faculty at the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP), Krea University. She is an anthropologist whose research lies at the intersection of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, urban studies and ecological anthropology. She has an undergraduate degree in Life Sciences from Kirori Mal College, Delhi University and Masters in Anthropology from Delhi University. Her MPhil in Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics was a mapping of the emergent developments in the sciences of nutrition, the microbiome and genetics to trace incipient transformations in the notions of the self, of health and pathology in biology but also in more popular cultural paradigms.
She is currently pursuing a PhD in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics. Her thesis is titled ‘The Urban and the Pathological: Delhi through Epidemics’. Through an extensive ethnographic study of marginalised neighbourhoods, disease-prone communities, municipal offices, public health authorities, and hospitals, the thesis tells the story of a city in the grip of a recurrent dengue epidemic, COVID pandemic, and communal riots in its marginalised areas.
She is dedicated to exploring and expanding the possibilities of academic writing in Hindi. Her popular writing has appeared in Hindi dailies such as Jansatta. Her recent academic writings in English have appeared in journals like EPW and Contributions to Indian Sociology.
Sociology
Social Anthropology
Medical Anthropology
Urban Studies
Science and Technology Studies
Journal Article
Rani, Shweta. 2021. ‘Corona in the City of Mosquitoes: Exploring Local in the Time of Global.’ Economic and Political Weekly 56 (50): 64-65.
Book Chapter
Rani, Shweta. Forthcoming.‘Living with Mosquitoes: Exploring the dengue outbreak in Delhi.’ In Event-Everyday: Epistemologies and Empiricisms, edited by Yasmeen Arif. Orient-Blackswan Press.
Book Review
Shweta, Rani. 2021. Review of ‘Reframing the Environment: Resources, Risk and Resistance in Neoliberal India’, edited by Manisha Rao, Contributions to Indian Sociology 55 (3): 470-473.
Writing and Oral Communication (WOC)
