Completed PhD Thesis Completed Doctoral Projects/As Second Supervisor

Valentina Barnabei

The dissertation project inquiries on the interplay of migration, mobility, changes in urban landscape, and beautification of the city of Delhi. In so doing, this research analyses a corpus of contemporary Hindi literary texts through a combined methodological approach that includes the methods of literary geography and literary anthropology. The texts of the corpus have been written between the 80s and nowadays and their stories are set in Delhi during this same timeframe. The project, therefore, aims to analyse the perception of the changes of the urban space in the last decades from the point of views of its residents, particularly focusing on the perceptions of bastī's residents and migrants. This research also wants to investigate the social role that contemporary Hindi literature plays in the current debate on migration and gentrification in contemporary metropolises by reporting and expressing the instances of evicted and relocated dwellers.

Aniruddha Kar

This research project combines the memories of India’s Partition with museums and digital archives. It aims to compare how the entangled memories of the event of the Partition of India are commemorated in the museums and digital archives of the three countries affected by the Partition: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. How are Partition memories expressed in the interplay of various media at the disposal of museums and archives in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh? Why were Partition memories silenced or in a state of amnesia for many decades? What are the politics of silencing/remembering the Partition in museums and digital archives? This project includes how the politics of remembering and forgetting influence the construction of nationhood in museums in the South Asian context. By investigating all these points this study will provide a better understanding of the practices of remembering Partition memories.