Anindita Nag is a cultural historian of modern South Asia, with allied interests in the history of science and technology, histories of food and famine, and visual culture in the modern world. She received her PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles for a dissertation on the relationship between science and colonial rule in the governance of famine in nineteenth century India. Conceptually, her scholarship has focused on the strategic engagement between science and imperial governance in India, particularly in the contexts of inequality, poverty and resource scarcity.
At the MPIWG, she is a member of the working group on “Colonial and Postcolonial Histories of Planning” in Department III. Previously, she has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the MPIWG in Department II and taught at Jadavpur University, Calcutta from 2013–2015. Anindita Nag’s ongoing research at the MPIWG explores the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of planning in the context of colonization, development and humanitarian aid. She is also pursuing a new research agenda on the role of the senses as evidence and sources of scientific knowledge, raising critical epistemological questions about the relationship among the material, technological and the sensorial in the sciences.