Nayantara Sheoran (PhD in Cultural Studies, 2013) started work as postdoctoral research fellow at the Graduate Institute in Genève in 2013. She is housed in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology and is funded through a European Research Council (ERC) grant on the emergence of Stem Cell Biotechnologies in India.
The fellowship involves extended fieldwork in India, examining the socio-cultural and ethical implications of the spread of stem cell biotechnologies.
Meanwhile, Sheoran works on turning her dissertation into a book manuscript. Her dissertation analyzed shifts in reproductive politics in liberalized India, focusing on pharmaceutical contraceptives and their marketing to women (and men) within neo-liberal and neo-Malthusian frameworks.
Her dissertation research on the contraceptive pharmaceuticals as biomedical interventions in women's life was supported by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant in the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Program and also the Dean’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship at George Mason University.
At the 2013 meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Tara won two graduate student paper awards for her article on "stratified contraception": one from the Council on Anthropology of Reproduction (CAR) and another from the Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco Study Group (ADTSG), both of which are part of the Society of Medical Anthropology (SMA). The manuscript is currently being revised for a special issue of Medical Anthropology.
March 10, 2014