Overview
I am a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow jointly appointed in the Department of Asian Studies and the Society for the Humanities (SHUM) at Cornell University. As an ethnographer specializing in South and Southeast Asian religions, my research explores religious practices across both homeland and diasporic contexts, spanning from the pre-modern era to the present. More specifically, my work focuses on the dynamic tensions that animate Hindu identities as they intersect with a diverse range of ethnic, economic, and religious settings, both within and beyond Asia.
My scholarly path has been shaped by my experience as a Third Culture Kid (TCK) who was raised between India, Thailand, and Canada. This transnational background has equipped me with the ability to engage with source texts and cultural communities in multiple languages, including French, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, and Thai. Complementing this global upbringing, I earned a BA and MA at McGill University, before completing a PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Before joining Cornell, I served as Assistant Professor in Residence of Asian/Asian Diaspora Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) from 2023 to 2025 where I developed and taught courses on Asian philosophy, diaspora studies, and the role of fantasy in religious narratives and artistic practice. Guided by a commitment to student-centered pedagogy, my teaching philosophy at RISD emphasized creative, interdisciplinary approaches to learning—an ethos reflected in the many pieces of student artwork that now adorn my home and office. I look forward to deepening this philosophy in collaboration with the brilliant students I’ve had the privilege of meeting thus far at Cornell.
Research Focus
My work is global in scale and builds on extensive ethnographic fieldwork across diverse urban contexts—including temples in Mumbai, beauty salons in Bangkok, Thai restaurants in Providence, and yoga studios in New York City. During my fellowship, I am expanding this research through several invited journal articles and by writing my first monograph, Global Ganesh: Mapping a Divine Diaspora.
Based on my dissertation, Global Ganesh examines the emergence of independent religious movements led by Thai Buddhist laypeople and monastics in suburban Bangkok and the American Northeast. These movements center on deities widely venerated within the contemporary Indian Hindu pantheon— most notably Ganesha, the elephant-headed remover of obstacles, along with Shiva, Vishnu, and various manifestations of Hindu Mother Goddesses such as Lakshmi and Kali.
Drawing on material and visual culture, queer studies, diaspora studies, animal studies, and even theories of cuteness and restaurant management, Global Ganesh develops a new heuristic for understanding Thai religious practices. It examines how these practices engage with—and are shaped by—global Hindu communities and transnational circulations of ritual, art, and storytelling traditions. Collectively, the case studies in Global Ganesh challenge dominant taxonomies in religious studies and call for analytic frameworks that better account for lived realities and cultural distinctiveness. Ultimately, the book not only rethinks how Hindu traditions travel and adapt across borders but also advances interpretive approaches to religious studies that foreground human experience, ritual creativity, and cross-disciplinary insight.