Urmila Mohan (Ph.D., 2015, University College London/UCL) is an anthropologist of material culture with a focus on clothing and bodily practices. She is Honorary Research Fellow, Dept. Of Anthropology, UCL, and the founder/editor of the open-access digital journal “The Jugaad Project”. She has researched and theorized materiality, praxis and aesthetics in diverse contexts including museums, religious communities and pandemic activist groups and in various regions, including India, Indonesia and the U.S. Her research has been funded by Victoria and Albert Museum (Nehru Trust for Indian Collections), London; Asian Cultural Council, New York; Coby Foundation Ltd., New York, and Rotary International. A transdisciplinary scholar who works across domains and geographies, she draws upon her background in anthropology, design and art to develop and teach courses that connect these fields.
Urmila Mohan
B.F.A. Communication Design, National Institute of Design, India, 1998
B.A. (Hons), Anthropology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, 2000
M.F.A. Studio Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 2009
Ph.D. Anthropology, University College London, U.K., 2015
India and Indonesia; Textiles and Clothing; Hinduism; Material Religion; Material Activism; Praxeology; Power and Subjectivation; Museum Anthropology; Historical Anthropology
Dr. Mohan is working on a monograph on U.S. pandemic makers as well as an edited volume on praxis.
2021. Urmila Mohan and Susan Rodgers “Editorial: Classification Schemes Gone Awry: Implications for Museum Research and Exhibition Display Practices.” Special Issue of Museum Anthropology.
2021. Urmila Mohan. “The Indonesian Alcove at the American Museum of Natural History: Art, Culture Areas, and the Mead-Bateson Bali Project.” Special Issue of Museum Anthropology.
2021. The Material Subject: Rethinking Bodies and Objects in Motion. Urmila Mohan and Laurence Douny eds., Routledge.
2019. Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism. Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and the Arts.
2018. Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles. Chicago: BGC/University of Chicago Press.
2017. Urmila Mohan and Jean-Pierre Warnier eds., “The Bodily and Material Cultures of Religious Subjectivation”, Journal of Material Culture, Special Issue.