I am a PhD Candidate of Sociology with a Collaborative Specialization in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. My research lies at the intersection of historical sociology, political sociology, women and gender studies, race and colonialism, geography, and postcolonial studies. I employ historical methods to critically examine the relationship between gender, the colonial state, and anticolonial movements. My overarching research aim is to examine the development and consolidation of women’s subordinate position under colonial rule, with a specific focus on property relations.

My dissertation reveals previously unrecognized processes through which gendered relations of property were reinforced through the consolidation of colonial state power during the First World War in British India. Drawing on formerly unseen archival data collected in Lahore, Islamabad, London, and San Francisco, among other digital repositories, I identify welfare and state repression as key sites to uphold male property ownership and reveal the lengths that colonial administrators went to protect and reproduce the male landowner while denying women autonomous land ownership in this critical period. In doing so, my work offers a bold retelling of the First World War and revolutionary activity in British India and advances novel insights into the enduring legacies of the colonial imposition of private property relations.

My work has been published in Political Power and Social Theoryand the Journal of World-Systems Research and has won awards from the American Sociological Association Marxist Section, Canadian Sociological Association Comparative and Historical Research Cluster, and the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. My research has been supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Ontario Government (OGS), University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs Center for South Asian Studies, and the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies, along with internal fellowships and grants.