About Garima Jaju

I work at the intersection of Anthropology, Development Studies and South Asian Studies. My doctoral research is an ethnographic exploration of the category of the ‘new age professional’. Based on the retail floor of an organized retail company selling budget eyewear products, the ethnography follows store floor sales attendants, optometrists and store managers to tell the story of a changing India in the efforts and failures of the store staff to fully embody a professional persona.

My current post-doctoral research takes me in a different direction. Working in the intimate domestic spaces in the changing city of Gurgaon, I explore how processes of urban transformation are linked to gender-based violence. Instead of studying isolated incidents of spectacular acts of violence, my research aims to map women's everyday social worlds in the city, in which the spectre of violence looms large.