Salah Punathil is a Sociologist and Assistant Professor at the Centre for Regional Studies, University of Hyderabad, India. He is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Gottingen, Germany. He has taught Sociology at Tezpur University, Assam (September 2011 to June 2014) and Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi (July 2009 to May 2010). His research interest includes ethnic violence, migration, citizenship, Muslims in South Asia and the intersection of archives and ethnography. His book ‘Interrogating Communalism: Violence, Citizenship and Minorities in South India’ is published by Routledge in 2019. The book examines conflict and violence among religious minorities and the implication on the idea of citizenship in contemporary India. Including rich empirical evidence from historical and ethnographic material, Salah shows how the contours of violence among minorities position Muslims as more vulnerable subjects of violent conflicts. He has published articles in journals such as South Asia Research and Contributions to Indian Sociology. Punathil is the recipient of M.N Srinivas Award for Young Indian Sociologist, 2015. Salah’s current research focuses on the migration of Muslims from the present day Bangladesh region to the North East India and the crisis of citizenship and ethnic violence in contemporary time. While historicizing the migration question in South Asia, his work aims to explore how national and ethnic boundaries affects the everyday lives of migrant communities.
Lectures:
- Violence among Religious Communities in Kerala: Beyond the Binary of ‘Secular’ and ‘Communal’