Alisha Cherian

Alisha Elizabeth Cherian joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as APARC Predoctoral Fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year. She is a PhD candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Stanford University. She received her BA from Vassar College in Anthropology and Drama with a correlate in Asian Studies, and her MA in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago.

Her dissertation, entitled "Beyond Integration: Indian Singaporean Public Urban Life", investigates how enforced racial integration shapes racial formations and race relations in Singapore. Her project explores everyday encounters and interactions that are structured, but not overdetermined, by the state's multiracial policies as well as colonial histories and regional legacies of Indian indentured and convict labour. With her research, she seeks to contribute to a more ethnographic understanding of how plural societies are approached both scholarly and practically.