Introducing Professor Deepanshu Mohan, SEAC Visiting Fellow and Professor of Economics and Dean, IDEAS, Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), New Delhi, India. He is Director, Centre for New Economics Studies, Jindal School of Liberal Arts, and a Senior Research Fellow, International Institute of Higher Education at JGU.
1.What will you be working on during your time as SEAC Visiting Fellow?
I will be working on a study that focuses on the post-pandemic livelihood transition of street vendors in city-markets across Cambodia's Phnom Penh area. This study will be an extension to my previous work focusing on a comparative study on the governing dynamics of urban informality, analysed through the day-to-day lived experiences of street vendors (and other vulnerable working groups) across Cambodia and India.
2.What led you to your field of study/what inspired your interest in these topics?
My academic work and documentation focusing on the livelihood transitions of vulnerable working communities across South Asia and Southeast Asia is inspired by my own social experience of working closely with different local civil society organisations and 'informal' solidarity networks, based across cities and rural areas (across India and Cambodia), those working with the objective of securing upward mobility, socio-economic development of marginalised (precariously placed) working communities. The intersectional use of performative arts, audio-visual methods of ethnographic documentation while developing a more interdisciplinary methodological perspective to studying the lived experience of 'vulnerability' amongst 'informal' working groups has also allowed me to enable connected organisational networks to (visually) archive the voices of the community (interviewed during different projects) and provide a platform and direct agency to those affected by high inequalities and state-apathy. An archived access of video essays from my work (via Centre for New Economics Studies) is accessible from here
3. How do you like to relax and unwind?
Exploring the more remote neighbourhoods of London city-to observe the socio-economic landscape in which migrant communities reside across the city. Also, Meeting and Connecting with Scholars (across LSE departments and other institutions) from diverse disciplines and listening to their life-stories, work experience.