The Indian Animal Studies Collective aims to bring together all those who are interested in nonhuman and human animals and the dynamics of their co-existence, particularly in India. How can we think about animals while living in multispecies spaces, and how do we think about them when some humans share that precarity? The Collective thinks through these positions in the hope to arrive at one of its own. 

The IASC organizes ‘Table Talks’, informal conversations with academics or activists whose work we admire.

We now have a podcast! The Indian Animal Studies Collective Podcast is a recording of our table talks and panel discussions on your favorite platform! We will continue to upload our videos on our youtube channel as well.

Tune in and subscribe on Spotify.

The third episode of the series, Between Theory and Praxis,”Arikomban’s Story” with Dr. Sreedhar Vijayakrishnan and Prakash is now live on Spotify.

Check out Day 1 of Fifty Years of Project Tiger: Conservation, Conflict, Critique

Bureaucracy and Community

Politics and Markets

Politics and Markets

10am–11.30am UK / 3.30–5pm IST

Susan Haris: Introduction – The Poetics and Politics of “Projects”

Revati Pandya: Socio-Cultural Considerations for the Tiger Tourism Market of Corbett Tiger Reserve

Discussant: Sudha Vasan

 

Bureaucracy and Community

2–3.30pm UK / 7.30–9pm IST

Nayanika Mathur: Project Tiger as a Paper Tiger? The crooked bureaucracy of conservation

Sonakshi Srivastava: Tiger Atmosfears – Inequitable Topologies of Affect in Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve

Discussant: Ambika Aiyadurai

Reenchanting the Sundarbans

10am–11.30am UK / 3.30–5pm IST

Annu Jalais: Sundarbans Tiger-Charmers

Megnaa Mehtta: Human Sacrifice at the Temple of Project Tiger: Recounting a Silent Ritual from the Sundarbans

Discussant: Dominic O’Key

 

Paper Tigers

2–3.30pm UK / 7.30–9pm IST

Sundhya Walther: Unwilding the Wild Tiger

Surabhi Goel: Reading (and Translating) Kedarnath Singh’s ‘Bagh’

Discussant: Anu Pande

Histories from Above and Below

10am–11.30am UK / 3.30–5pm IST

Ameer Hamja Van Gujjar, Pranav Menon and Akshay Chettri: Moving Beyond Metaphors of Tiger: Everyday Conservation and Van Gujjar Subjectivities in the Forests of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh

Mahesh Rangarajan: Project Tiger, 1966–77, Or, How the Tiger Became Indian (and Stayed So)

Discussant: Raza Kazmi

 

Contested Futures

2–3.30pm UK / 7.30–9pm IST

Biswajit Sarmah: Reinventing Conservation: Project Tiger in the Kaziranga National Park

Nitin D Rai, Paromita Bathija and Shruthi Jagadeesh: Counting Tigers, Authorising Accumulation: Tiger Conservation as an Eco-Scalar Fix

Discussant: Jared Margulies

*James Forbes – Oriental Memoirs, Vol. III, Bombay, around 1779.