Ayesha Vemuri

Ayesha Vemuri (she/her) is a SSHRC-funded Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholar pursuing a PhD in Communication Studies at McGill University (supervisor: Darin Barney). Her doctoral research lies at the intersection of climate change, migration, infrastructure and feminist STS. Her research analyses the development of expertise in the intertwined contexts of climate change and rising authoritarianism in India. Specifically, it investigates the construction and management of risk of floods and migration in relation to one another in the context of Assam, India. Through this work, she hopes to understand the ways in which these forms of expertise and risk construction are implicated in the gendered and racialized distribution of injustice, violence and precarity in Assam.

Ayesha is a member of the advisory board of the Environmental Media Lab (Director: Mél Hogan), a contributing editor of Uneven Earth, a Research Assistant for the SSHRC-funded After Oil 2: Solarity Summer School (PI: Darin Barney) organized by the Petrocultures Research Group. Prior to her doctoral work, Ayesha completed a master’s degree in Communication Studies at McGill University (2016), where she focused on the politics of transnational feminist solidarity networks centered around issues of gender-based and sexual violence. She also worked as a research assistant for the SSHRC-funded IMPACTS project (PI: Shaheen Shariff), examining the role of student activists in addressing sexual violence at universities. Contact: ayesha.vemuri@mail.mcgill.ca

Projects

The Case for Letting Assam Flood (doctoral dissertation; ongoing) investigates the forms and practices of governmentality that are being developed in Assam, India in a context of both anthropogenic climate change and the rise of Hindutva authoritarianism. In other words, this project examines the ways in which the Government of India develops biopolitical measures to respond to flooding events in Assam in ways that seem to apply similar logics of containment to the floodwaters and the “flood” of migrants. Following feminist science and technology studies (STS) scholars and the critical study of technological infrastructures, this study will analyze how forms of expertise such as scientific papers, models, policy documents and plans are forms of worldbuilding and future-casting that create and reproduce some futures while foreclosing others. Research questions include: How does the Indian state construct the risks of climate-related flooding and migration in Assam? What terms, metaphors, and forms of measurement used to account for floods and migration as risks? In what ways are these two kinds of “excess” constructed in relation to one another? What orientations, interests and possible/desired futures are articulated in or implied by these constructions? How should this be situated historically?

After Nirbhaya: Anti-sexual Violence Activism and the politics of transnational social media campaigns (MA Thesis; McGill University) explored three media campaigns that went viral on social media following the 2012 Delhi gangrape of a young woman on a moving bus. The study examines the discourse surrounding these three campaigns through the conceptual lens of transnational feminist solidarity, as articulated in the work of postcolonial feminists such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Jacqui Alexander, Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan. It argues that international media reports which uncritically celebrate the use of Hindu mythology in campaigns about sexual violence contribute to the persistence of orientalist and neocolonial perceptions of India.

Publications

Vemuri, Ayesha. 2020. “Talk to Me: Transforming the Dialectics of Public Space through Feminist Activism in India.” Gender, Place and Culture 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2020.1841121.

Vemuri, Ayesha. 2020. “‘Calling Out’ Campus Sexual Violence: An Analysis of Anti-Rape Student Activism and Media Engagement at McGill University.” In Violence Interrupted: Confronting Sexual Violence on University Campuses, edited by Diane Crocker, Joanne Minaker, and Amanda Nelund, 327–48. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Vemuri, Ayesha. 2019. “Bruised, Battered, Bleeding: Mobilizing Abused Goddesses for ‘Women’s Empowerment’”. Feminist Theory, 146470011988623. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700119886238.

Vemuri, Ayesha. 2018. “‘Calling Out’ Campus Sexual Violence: Student Activist Labors of Confrontation and Care.” Communication, Culture and Critique 11 (3): 498–502. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcy021.

Garcia, Chloe and Ayesha Vemuri. 2017. “Girls and Youth Women Resisting Rape Culture through YouTube Videos.” Girlhood Studies 10 (3): 26-44. 

Garcia, Chloe and Ayesha Vemuri. 2017. Theorizing “Rape Culture”: How Law, Policy, and Education Support can help end Sexual Violence. Education and Law Journal 27 (1): 1-27.

Activity

Anti-Colonial Environmental Studies (ACES) reading group -- a reading group for graduate students, faculty members and researchers across Montreal universities. Meets regularly to discuss recent scholarly and literary texts at the intersections of postcolonial studies, indigenous studies, and environmental justice. Contact ayesha.vemuri@mail.mcgill.ca or hannah.tollefson@mail.mcgill.ca.

Dalit-Black Solidarities reading group – a reading group for researchers, activists, and advocates interested in the Montreal area. Meets monthly to discuss the building of non-colonizing solidarities within Black and South Asian communities. Contact ayesha.vemuri@mail.mcgill.ca