Graduate Associate
rajatn[at]yorku.ca
Doctoral Candidate
Graduate Programme in Theatre & Performance Studies, York University
Research Keywords:
Voice; vocal traditions; digital practices; possible/impossible world-making; fiction film/future-making; rural north India
Research Region(s):
India, South Asia
Research Diaspora(s):
Rajat Nayyar is an anthropologist and a filmmaker with an MA in Audiovisual Ethnography from Tallinn University. He is a PhD candidate and Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar in Theatre & Performance Studies at York University, where his research focus is on voice, vocal traditions, digital practices, possible/impossible world-making and fiction film/future-making in rural north India.
Rajat’s recent chapter, “Staging Care: Dying, Death and Possible Futures,” examines sensory audiovisual ethnography in his study of the distinctive politics-of-care staged by families who anticipate and create the possibility of Moksha for their dying relative in Kashi, India’s holy city. He is curating Talking Uncertainty (an online talk series/podcast), developing Emergent Futures CoLab, and co-editing the Performance Ethnography section of the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography. He is also the founder of Espírito Kashi,
a project that facilitates performative spaces for rural Indian communities to critically re-imagine folklore, envision new socialities, digital realities, decolonize archives and film futures.