Aditya Kiran Kakati

I am a lecturer at the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society at the University of Groningen. I teach courses on anthropology, history and historical anthropology.

I have a doctorate in International History (with a Minor in Anthropology and Sociology) from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (IHEID). As a global and social historian with an interdisciplinary background in anthropology, I explore violent state-building, wars, and resistance movements. I focused on the Highland space that scholars call “Zomia.” My research examines why certain places like Zomia’s highland frontiers are stereotyped as “violent” despite globally interconnected histories, leading to sustained conflicts. I investigate these dynamics using historical and archival methodologies, by reading various archives (textual, oral, community, digital, objects) “against the grain.” My work explores the intersections of violence, memory, sovereignty and cultural politics among indigenous borderland communities and the historical and political uses of “remoteness” in representing cultural heritage, memory and citizenship claims today. Alongside these issues, my other publications have explored the uses of “culture” and the emergence of “ethnic cuisine” to understand indigenous minorities’ politics and investigate alternative meanings of sovereignty and self-determination through cultural heritage claims by indigenous groups. 

I received several grants and fellowships. I am currently affiliated as a researcher at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden, the Netherlands. I had a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for research at the University of Amsterdam and the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, followed by a brief stint at the FMSH in Paris. I previously visited as a fellow at Princeton University, the Institute of Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, Oxford University-Europaem program. I am engaged with projects with the Highland Institute, Nagaland. I grew up in Assam, India, and I completed my undergraduate studies in History at St Stephen’s College, New Delhi and an MA in International History from Geneva.