Trained as an anthropologist and historian, my research is broadly focused on the transregional circulation of capital, commodities, people, and religion across the Global South, and between Africa and South Asia in particular. I have also worked extensively on India’s development cooperation with regions of the Global South, and Africa in particular.
MIASA Project: Africans in contemporary India: Rethinking theories of mobility, migration and diasporisation from the Global South
At MIASA, my research is concerned with understanding diverse trajectories of African mobility to South Asia over the last four decades. Transregional migration is almost always analyzed from the perspective of South-North frameworks. This research will seek to understand how an analysis of trajectories of migration from Africa, and West Africa in particular, to India, have the potential reconfigure established paradigms and theoretical frameworks in the contemporary studies of migration and mobility, and will offer new perspectives from a ‘southern’ viewpoint. In doing so, I will aim to develop 1) new theoretical perspectives about migration within the Global South; 2) new theoretical perspectives which seek to study seemingly disconnected geographies (South Asia and West Africa]) as part of the same sociological frame.
Selected publications
Venkatachalam, M., Modi, R., and Salazar, J. 2020. Common Threads: Fabrics made in India for Africa (Leiden: African Studies Centre Leiden). Open access: https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/120547
King, K., and Venkatachalam, M. 2021. India’s Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer). ISBN: 978-1847012746.
Venkatachalam, M. 2021. ‘The Indian political right, soft power, and the reimagining of Africa’ in King, K. & Venkatachalam, M (eds). India’s Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa, 59-77, (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer).
Venkatachalam, M. 2022. “African Pentecostalism in India: Being Born Again in the Diaspora”, Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies, 6 (1), 90-112. https://doi.org/10.26443/jiows.v6i1.123
Venkatachalam, M., Nielsen, KB., and Modi, R. 2023. ‘The politics of gifts and reciprocity in South–South Cooperation: The case of India’s Covid-19 diplomacy.’ Journal of International Development, 35 (4), 600–13. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3705
