EDITORIAL TEAM
Antara Chakrabarti, General Editor and Transregional Editor-in-Chief, is a doctoral candidate in the Sociocultural track of the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. She is currently studying engineering interventions along a river-border in the Bengal Delta to examine the production of knowledge about the environment in precarious landscapes.
Dr. Olga Verlato, General Editor and Middle East Editor-in-Chief, is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. Her research explores the history of language politics, media, and migration in modern Egypt and the Mediterranean, with a focus on education and the press.
Rishav Kumar Thakur, South Asia Editor-in-Chief (on leave till Fall 2024), is a doctoral candidate in sociocultural anthropology at Columbia University, New York. Their research is on performance and nightlife in Assam. They founded Queer Objects, a practice-oriented art incubator in Guwahati, Assam, in 2023.
Niyati Shenoy, South Asia and Transregional Editor, is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender at Columbia University. She is writing a history of rape and retributive justice in colonial India. Her interests include caste studies, sexuality studies, affect theory, anticarceral feminisms, early modern Persianate histories and cultures, life-writing, and autobiography.
Purbasha Das, Contributing Editor for South Asia, completed her doctoral studies at the Center for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her research explores the history of road transport in 20th century India. Purbasha was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University from 2019-2020.
Jade Iris Schoenfeld, Student-Intern, is a junior studying vocal performance with a film and media studies minor at Wagner College. She is interested in all musical endeavors and music from different cultures.
Charles Milne-Home, Student-Intern, is a sophomore studying history at Wagner College. He is interested in petroleum politics, militarism in the Middle East, and legal histories.
ADVISORY BOARD
Dr. Anupama Rao, Faculty Advisor, has research and teaching interests in gender and sexuality studies; caste and race.
She is the Senior Editor of Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East; Associate Director, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society; and organizer of the Ambedkar Initiative, which is supported by the Provost’s Office (Barnard), the Deans of Humanities and Social Sciences (Columbia), the Office of the EVP (Columbia), Columbia University Press, and the Columbia Libraries.
Dr. Marwa Elshakry, Faculty Advisor, specializes in the history of science, technology, and medicine in the modern Middle East. She received her M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2003) from Princeton. Her first book, entitled, Reading Darwin in Arabic is forthcoming in 2013 with University of Chicago Press.
Dr. Steven Pierce, Faculty Advisor, is an expert in the history and culture of northern Nigeria and have consulted on issues of human rights, gender, and sexuality in Nigeria.
In addition to my position as the Senior Lecturer in Modern African History at the University of Manchester, I am also the Senior Editor for Africa for Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Dr. Sohini Chattopadhyay, Faculty Advisor (former General Editor), is an Assistant Professor of History at Union College, NY. Her research spans from colonialism to its aftermath, with particular interests in the political history of the region, urbanization, labor histories, caste and community histories, and the history of science and technology.
Dr. Karim Maged Malak, Faculty Advisor (former General Editor) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Non-Western History at the Department of History at Wagner College, NY. He is a historian of the Global South with a focus on the nineteenth-twentieth century colonialism and governmentality in the Middle East
Dr. Zeyad el Nabolsy, Faculty Advisor (former Africa Editor), is an assistant professor of Philosophy at York University (Toronto). He specializes in the African intellectual history with a focus on the interactions between philosophy and science on the continent.
Former Members
Anna Reumert, Former Middle East Editor
Shaunna Rodrigues, Former South Asia Editor
Yayra Sumah, Former Africa Editor
Basma N. Radwan, Former Middle East Editor and CSSAAME Editorial Assistant
Simon Conrad, Former Contributing Editor for the Middle East
Tara Giangrande, Former Content and Design Manager
Nishat Akhtar, Former Research Intern
Mary Ingram, Former Research Intern
Khadija Hussain, Former Copy Editor and Research Intern
Layla Varkey, Former Editorial Manager