Friday, February 1, 2019
2:00pm – 4:00pm
Birkelund Board Room, 111 Thayer St
Roluahpuia obtained his Ph.D. from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), India. His research interests broadly concern identity, nationalism, development and borderland studies. His Ph.D. thesis consists of an in-depth ethnographic account of the Mizo national movement in northeast India, examining how the quest for an independent Mizo state was envisioned and practiced. Broadly put, the thesis is an engagement with the question of national integration and nation-making in post-colonial South Asian states that were marked by intermittent sub-national or ethnic national movements. Through his thesis, he explored the factors that enabled the rise of Mizo nationalism and how its rise was constitutive of socio-cultural ethno-histories and identities that informed and continue to inform Mizo society today. His thesis emphasizes the importance of oral cultures in understanding Mizo nationalism and how that shaped the articulation and circulation of nationalist ideas across borders and regions in everyday lives and politics.