Professional Statement
Sanghamitra Das is a Sociocultural Anthropologist specializing in Medical Anthropology. Her research investigates the intersections of Medicine, Genetics, Technology, and Society. She received her PhD from the interdisciplinary Center for Biology and Society at Arizona State University in 2023. From 2023 to 2025, Sanghamitra was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology sponsored by the Committee on Southern Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. Her research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Social Science Research Council. Sanghamitra is currently working on her first book manuscript, Ordering Tribal Disorders, which explores the politics of sickle cell management in India, a genetic blood disorder that is biomedically and bureaucratically described as being prevalent among the historically othered Indigenous Adivasi and the previously “Untouchable” Dalit communities. By centering on lived experiences, the book highlights Indigenous articulations of sickle cell health.
Sanghamitra’s broader research investigates how constructed notions of human difference are essentialized through biogenetic discourses that in turn structure global and local political economies of health. At the same time, this research asks how genetic research on human health and the adoption of genetic technologies as therapeutic strategies are leading to the generation of not only an unprecedented volume of biological data. But it also highlights the social, cultural, political, and ethical complexities entailing such knowledge production and its mobilization. Continuing to pay close attention to community articulations of health and well-being, her ongoing research also investigates how health and environment have historically been intricately interconnected.
Appointments
- Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences
- Associate Faculty Institute for Bioethics
Education and Training
- Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Chicago, 2023-2025
- PhD, Arizona State University, 2023
- MPhil, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2017
Professional Interests in Bioethics
Representative Publications
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Das, Sanghamitra. “From the Tea Gardens to the Clinic.” CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion 7, no. 1 (2026): 85-104.
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Das, Sanghamitra. “Indentured Clinical Labor? An Indigenist Standpoint View of “Forced Surrogacy” and Reproductive Governance in India.” BioSocieties. Online First. October 2022.
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Das, Sanghamitra. “Our blood itself is disabled!”: Hemoglobinopathy, Certificate Anxiety and Contested Constitutionalism in Disability Legislations in India.” Medicine Anthropology Theory. 9(3). 2022.
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Das, Sanghamitra & Samhita Das. “Intimate Labor at Biomedical Frontlines: Situated Knowledges of Female Community Health Workers in the Management of COVID-19 in India.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. 7(1). 2021.
Recent Funding
- University of Pittsburgh, Research, Ethics & Society Initiative, Co-PI for “Data, Decision-making, and Reproductive Health in South Asia: Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of Public Health Research and Interventions.” [PI: Zoé M. Hendrickson, Associate Professor, Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health] , 2026
- Society of Medical Anthropology Travel Initiative, Category: Early Career Researcher or Underrepresented US-based or International Anthropologist. Award for Conference Travel: 2024 American Anthropology Association Annual Meeting , 2024
- The University of Chicago , Norman Cutler Travel Grant, 2024-25
Awards and Honors
- Bluestone Rising Scholar Prize 2026
- https://journals.library.brandeis.edu/index.php/caste/announcement/view/28