Urmila Mohan is an anthropologist and curator of material culture and religion with a focus on textiles and Hinduism in India and Indonesia. She is Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, University College London. She is the founder and editor of the The Jugaad Project and has published on materiality, praxis and aesthetics in the context of textiles, clothing and religion. She curated “Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles” in 2018, based on the Mead-Bateson textile collection at the American Museum of Natural History. 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; Praxeology; Power and Subjectivation; Museum Anthropology; Historical Anthropology
Mohan is working on a research project on heritage and innovation practices in India and Indonesia.
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.