Kumud Bhansali joined the Department of Sociology at South Asian University as a Postdoctoral Researcher affiliated with the AMR@LAB project.

Joining phase two of this project, Kumud is excited about her return to research in this multi-stakeholder collaboration between anthropology, public health, pharmacology, and microbiology. She views this as an opportunity to experience the praxis of interdisciplinarity in the field, where she will study migrant workers as a vulnerable category within the broader framework of biosocial network and transmission of AMR.

Kumud’s doctoral research examines the narratives of new entrepreneurs that point to and are shaped by the rise of entrepreneurialism and entrepreneurial cultures in post-liberalisation India. Her work explores the articulation of passion and being alag (different) with an attention to the survival strategies of new entrepreneurs in Pune. Before the AMR@LAB project, Kumud worked as an assistant professor at Symbiosis International University, where she taught courses in anthropology, introduction to research, and critical and academic writing in an undergraduate liberal arts program. She also founded the Center for Writing and Communicative Practices (CWCP) there.

Apart from conversations about how we learn and how to make teaching reading, thinking and writing more efficacious, Kumud practices Kintsugi, where she joins broken ceramic and writes articles for her column Dear Student on Medium.