Aishwarya is a DPhil candidate in Anthropology studying waste, sustainability, and infrastructure. Her research focuses on hilly regions in India, where waste management is often a problem due to the rugged terrain and lack of plain lands. She is interested in understanding perceptions towards waste in urbanising and industrialising spaces, and studying the gender, caste, and class relations in this context. Her doctoral thesis thus aims to follow the journey of waste – from the time it is formed to the method of its disposal and recycling in hilly regions. This will give insight to the social dynamics around waste, how waste can be disposed sustainably, and the infrastructure related to waste disposal. She is jointly supervised by Dr Elizabeth Hallam and Professor David Gellner.

She holds an undergraduate degree in History from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi (2019) and an MPhil in Social Anthropology (2021) from the University of Oxford. Her MPhil research was an ethnography on social mobility and consumption among women in eastern India. She is also a trained painter and often use visual material to convey her research.

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