Annu Jalais

Born and educated in Calcutta (now Kolkata), my fascination for stories about the Sundarbans, the largest natural habitat of Bengal tigers – famous for their man-eating habits – eventually led me to anthropology. I undertook fieldwork for nearly two years (between 1999 and 2001) in the West Bengal Sundarbans and was awarded a PhD in Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2004.

I view the relationship between humans and their environment, specifically in relation to wild animals and climate change, along with issues of development, justice and discrimination, as being at the core of my research. These have been explored in my first book Forest of Tigers: People, Politics and Environment in the Sundarbans (Routledge, 2010) and in articles. This region, famous since the 19th century for its distinctive plant and animal wildlife – especially the ‘man-eating’ Royal Bengal Tiger – is currently the scene of conflict between politics of global conservation and local inhabitants’ struggle for subsistence through both traditional and new globalised means. That is one strand explored in my research. But, at a more fundamental level, my book explores the human/non-human interface more directly: how people living in these impoverished islands interact with the tigers of the region and how their perceptions of tigers and locale articulate contradictory understandings of sociality.

My field, environmental anthropology, offers me opportunities for dialogue with the public to which I make a distinctive contribution; I teach a course called “Beasts, People, Wild Environments: South Asia”, I review for journals in anthropology as well as conservation and wildlife, I am an Associate Editor of the journal Conservation and Society, am currently writing on the Indian Anthropocene, the body and caste and have helped various media houses and journalists in understanding the Sundarbans or the Bengal delta (The Independent, NPR, Down to Earth, Earth Island Journal, Sahapedia, Daily Star, The Telegraph).

I have also been engaged in interdisciplinary research that brings together anthropological, historical and sociological methods and materials. Between September 2007 and August 2009 I was a researcher on an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project with Professors Joya Chatterji (History, Trinity College, Cambridge) and Claire Alexander (Sociology, Manchester) and conducted extensive fieldwork in Bangladesh and India. The first of the two publications I have co-written is: The Bengal Diaspora: Rethinking Muslim Migration (Routledge, December 2015). This book challenges a predominant assumption of theories of diaspora, namely that migrants settle in the West whereas, in fact, most remain in, or very close to, their own countries and regions of origin in the Global South. Dealing with the experience of Bengali Muslims, our research fills in the major gaps in historical and contemporary empirical knowledge about these communities, interactions with their ‘host communities’ and their links to those left behind. The second publication, a teaching resource booklet, comprises a comparative inter- and intra-national approach, spanning Bangladesh, India and Britain, and explores key sites within these nation-states. It is linked to a companion website (www.banglastories.org/) where through various life-stories, ictorial narratives and a historical timeline, it is possible for British-Bangladeshi children to get a greater sense of the histories of their ancestors, explore different phases of migration and settlement, and understand the shifting formations of ‘community’.

I have had the good fortune of teaching at the departments of Anthropology, London School of Economics, Goldsmiths College and the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) between 2003 and 2006 and of being a research fellow in places all over the world where I have met scholars with whom I have the immense honour of collaborating on various projects. The places have been the Agrarian Studies Program, Yale University, New Haven; the International Institute for Social History (IISH), Amsterdam; the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden; Jawaharlal Nehru Institute for Advanced Studies (JNIAS) at the JNU, New Delhi; Jadavpur University, Kolkata; the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), Cambridge, UK; the Centre d'Études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud (CEIAS), Paris.

Teaching Areas

The modules I (have) taught / teach at NUS:

• GEM1913 Beasts, People and Wild Environments
• SN2234 Gender and Society in South Asia
• SN2271 Religion and Society in South Asia
• SN1101E South Asia: People, Culture, Development

Other teaching interests:

• Introducing Anthropology
• The anthropology of human-animal relations
• Conservation issues and social justice
• Gender and sexuality; Kinship and society
• Religion (especially South Asian forms of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Sikkhism)
• Societies and Cultures along the Silk Roads

Awards and Grants

• 2018 Member of Movindeltas project which is an international team of scholars applying to the European Commission for the call: ‘H2020 LC-CLA-05-2019 – Human dynamics of Climate change’ to work on the topic in the Bengal and Mekong deltas. We are the recipient of initial seed money from the ANR (Agence National de la Recherche) for the “montage de réseaux scientifiques européens ou internationaux” (MRSEI - translated for the 'Setting Up of European or International Scientific Networks', awarded €30,000).

• 2012 Start-up grant for ‘The Delta Dwellers: Religion and Subaltern Bengali identity in Contemporary Bangladesh and West Bengal’, NUS, S$ 25,000.

• 2011 ‘Forest of Tigers: People, Politics and Environment in the Sundarbans’ long listed by the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), Social Sciences category.

• 2006 – ’09 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), U.K., under Diasporas, Migration & Identities large research grants for ‘The Bengal Diaspora’ (with Joya Chatterji and Claire Alexander) £ 500,000.

• 2011 Arts and Humanities Research Council, U.K., travel grant for ‘Early Bengali Printed Materials: Digitisation and Research (1778-1914)’ workshop with the British Library and the National Library, Kolkata, India; approx. £ 1200.

• 2004 ‘Malinowski Memorial Research Fund’, LSE, Anthropology; approx. £ 500.

• 2004 ‘Radcliffe-Brown Trust’; Royal Anthropological Institute; approx. £ 400.

• 2003 European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) – travel.

• 2000 – ’03 Research Studentships and travel grants, Department of Anthropology, LSE.

• 1992 – ’97 Scholarship from the French Govt. for DEUG, DULCO, and DREA.