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Smitha Radhakrishnan is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. Appropriately Indian is her first book, and is based on extensive interviews and ethnographic work with Indian IT professionals living in Mumbai, Bangalore, the Silicon Valley, and South Africa between 2004 and 2008. Work from this project has also been published in Theory and Society (2007), Journal of Intercultural Studies (2008), Qualitative Sociology (2009), and in three edited volumes, including the new volume Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes, edited by Raka Ray and Amita Baviskar (Routledge, 2011).
Smitha studies the cultural politics of globalization, especially as they intersect with gender, class, and nation. In her previous work, she studied the cultural politics of South African Indians in Durban as they have navigated the complexities of a post-apartheid world. Her next project examines entrepreneurial education programs geared toward microfinance borrowers, examining the ways in which microfinance influences the ways in which poor women understand themselves in relation to the market and the state.
Before coming to Wellesley, Smitha was a Global Fellow at UCLA's International Institute (2006-07). She is also a recipient of a 2011-12 American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW).
When Smitha is not writing, researching, or teaching, she is running after her toddler or dancing with Navarasa Dance Theater. She lives in Jamaica Plain, MA.
sradhakr at wellesley dot edu