Current Research Areas: history of the earth and environmental sciences, environmental history, blue humanities, earth systems modeling, south asia, anthropology of development, third world internationalisms
Tathagat is interested in the intersection of environmental history, STS, and the history of science and technology in modern South Asia. In particular, they are curious about how actors ranging from engineers to activists and foreign aid workers to earth scientists increasingly began to articulate their arguments for and against development in what we might today call “environmental” terms in mid-twentieth century India. They have previously worked on the pre-history of the Green Revolution in India, rivers as sites of environmental knowledge production in colonial and postcolonial South Asia, and how virologists made birds into an object of inquiry while tracking the spread of tropical diseases during the global Cold War.
Tathagat holds a BA in STS and Russian from Penn and an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge, where they were a Gates scholar. Prior to arriving at HASTS, they worked as a reporter for the Times of India.