Annual Conference on South Asia; Madison, Wisconsin
Kellogg Institute Conference Travel Grants
Conference: Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison, Wisconsin on October 22 – 25, 2025
Presentation: The Development of the Discipline of Criminology in Mid-Twentieth Century India
Report:
I attended the Annual South Asia Conference held at the Concourse Hotel, Madison from October 22nd-25th. The annual conference is one of the biggest South Asia conference in the United States and over a thousand scholars working on South Asia attended the conference this year. My presentation, titled “The Development of Criminology as a Discipline at the University of Lucknow, India, 1933-77” was part of the panel titles Law, Labour and Technology which was held on Friday, October, 23rd. My presentation was based on the field work I conducted in India this past summer and is also going to be a part of my dissertation.
Presenting at the South Asia conference was a great opportunity for me to solicit feedback from the more senior scholars in the field. To this extent, I was very fortunate to have interacted with Mitra Sharafi, a legal historian who works on the same time period and themes. I got the opportunity to present my work in her presence and afterwards had a detailed conversation with her about it. The conversation was not just helpful in refining my arguments, but she also gave me ideas for possible archival material I could look at going forward. Further, we also discussed the possible journals I could target for publication as well as places I could present my work at. Her interest in my work and support will be extremely crucial for me and attending this conference gave me the opportunity to meet with her. I also got the opportunity to meet with other senior scholars in the field who showed interest in my work and we discussed the possibility of presenting together at a future conference.
In sum, I was able to meet my goals for the conference which included soliciting feedback on my work from particular people and establish connections for future intellectual exchange.
