Shatabdi Das is Researcher at Calcutta Research Group. She has previously worked as Junior Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Economic Studies, University of Calcutta and has also taught at Sarsuna College, Kolkata, in the Department of Geography. Shatabdi has also worked previously with the Calcutta Research Group on several research projects (2018-2020). She has completed her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Calcutta on ‘Impact of Industrialisation and Urbanisation on the Environment of Asansol-Durgapur Planning Area’. Her research interests include urbanisation, environment, migration and displacement studies.

Rajat Kanti Sur is a Programme and Research Associate at the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata. He did his PhD from the Department of South and South-East Asian Studies, the University of Calcutta in 2019. His PhD dissertation is based on the evolution of subaltern popular performances in the postcolonial period where he has chosen the evolution and decline of the ‘Sawng’ performances in Kolkata as a case study. He contributes several articles in different journals and books like Indian Economic and Social History Review, Itikatha, and Dynamics of Dissent (book). He is associated with Indian History Congress, Bangiya Sahitya Parishad and The Asiatic Society, Kolkata as a member and some well-known NGOs and civil society organizations dealing with women, labour and social exclusion related issues.

His research interests are based on the new trends in migration and its impact on the popular performances in South Asia, the evolution of political culture in India during the elections and the role of the migrants and refugees in it. He did his previous research with this organisation was on the impact of migration in Bhojpuri nautanki performances (http://www.mcrg.ac.in/PP119.pdf).

Debashree Chakraborty is a Researcher at Calcutta Research Group. She has previously worked as a Junior Research Fellow at the Department of English, Assam University. She has also worked as a Research Associate in an ICSSR sponsored Major Research Project and has taught at the Department of English, Gurucharan College, Silchar. For her Ph.D thesis, she has worked on Climate Fiction. Apart from environmental humanities, her research interests include the intersections of climate change, migration, partition in cultural studies.

Kaveri is a Project Researcher at Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata. Her interest and research focus on statelessness and refugee studies and forced migration in Southeast and South Asia, including Human Rights, Citizenship, Human Security, Identity politics and Comparative Politics. Her ongoing doctoral research from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India focuses upon the conditions of life under ‘Statelessness’ and politics of citizenship and exclusion through the case study of stateless Rohingya refugees in India. Her work intends to explore the existing categories within refugee studies that would in turn trigger a debate on the anthropology of the state and how modern governance is conceived in light of that. In doing so, highlights the experiences of forced displacement, refugeeness, and unacknowledged status of the Rohingyas living in the semi-urban ghettoes of India. It explores their hopes, aspirations, fears, resilience, survival strategies, economic activities and unravels how the state’s bureaucratic initiatives and implementations are experienced in everyday life by such a population. Prior to joining at TISS, she has worked with the UNHCR - BOSCO Project as a Child Protection Officer. The nature of her work involved working with refugee children and unaccompanied minors. 

Utsa Sarmin
(01.03.20-31.12.20)