Cultural Anthropology
Magna Mohapatra is a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology with a minor in History and Communication Arts. Magna’s research focuses on social movements, comic affect, humour, mass media and political discourse in India and South Asia. Her research interests encompass political and psychological anthropology through the lens of decoloniality and affect. Magna has completed her M.A. and MPhil. in Sociology and Social Anthropology at South Asian University, New Delhi, where she graduated Summa cum laude as a Presidential Scholar. She looks forward to contributing to anthropological methodologies in her time in Madison.
Selected Awards:
Percy Buchanan Prize for Best Graduate Paper, Midwest Council for Asian Affairs, AAS, 2025.
Association for Asian Studies Student Conference Travel Grant, 2025.
Arvin B Weinstein Prize in Anthropology, 2025.
Robert J Miller Prize in Anthropology, 2024.
Scott Kloeck-Jenson Pre-Dissertation Summer Fellowship 2024.
Student Research Grants Competition Conference Award 2023.
Liberation War Museum Conference Travel Grant, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2019.
India Sri Lanka Foundation Travel Grant, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2019.
Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung Summer School Fellowship, Sariska, India, 2019.
Selected Publications:
“The Concept of Rasa: Affective Ways of Decolonial Knowing” in Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes edited by Renny Thomas and Sasanka Perera, Tulika Books and Columbia University Press, 2025.
“Ankhon Dekhi: A Curious Case of Objectivity” in Handbook of Indian Indie Cinema, edited by Jayjit Sarkar and Anik Sarkar, Routledge, India, 2025.
“Reconstructing Diversal Ontologies: Unlearning as a Methodology of Decolonial Living”, co-authored publication in The New Polis Journal, Vol.1, No.1 Winter 2022.