Dr. Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff

Profile

Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff (1964) who lives in Ranchi (Jharkhand, India) studied history at the Erasmus University Rotterdam from where she obtained her MA degree. During this time she also did courses at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India) and carried out fieldwork in Kolkata (India). She obtained her PhD degree in 1995 (cum laude) from the Centre of Asian Studies in Amsterdam(CASA) (University of Amsterdam).
Her PhD concerned a study on girlhood in colonial Calcutta. Following, she joined the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) in Ranchi, where she now is Director Research.

Since 1995, she has continuously been involved in various post-doctoral research and between 1995 and 1999 has completed research studies entitled 'The other(s) in a global youth culture' sponsored by the WOTRO and supervised by Prof. Carla Risseeuw (Leiden University)and a study on Displaced People in the South Asian Context' supported by the Indo-Dutch Programme for Alternatives in Development (IDPAD). After that she completed two more projects between 2001 and 2005 entitled 'Partition Memories, Identities and those who stayed: a comparision of Muslims in India and Hindus in Bangladesh' supported by SEPHIS and 'A Diaspora Coming Home? Overseas Indians re-establishing links with Bihar (India)' sponsored by WOTRO and supervised by Prof. Willem van Schendel (University of Amsterdam).
At present (2007-2010) she is involved as a post-doctoral fellow affiliated to the IISH and entitled 'Plants, People & Work: The Social History of Cash Crops in Asia, 18th to 20th Centuries'.

Selected publications

- Save Ourselves and the Girls! Girlhood in Calcutta under the Raj (Extravert: Rotterdam, 1995)
- 'The Experience of Globalisation: Indian Youth and Non-Consumption' (The birth of an alternative development rhetoric to save the world), In: Fardon, R; Binsbergen, W; Dijk, R. (Eds.), Modernity on a Shoestring: Dimensions of Globalisation. Consumption and Development in Africa and Beyond, (EIDOS: London, 1999)
- 'Juvenilization of Crime in Ranchi (Bihar): Media's Creation of a Criminal Youth Sub-Culture', In: The Eastern Anthropologist (1998), Vol. 51, No.2, April-June: 101-120
- 'Permanent Refugees. A Case Study of "unrehabilitable women" of two so-called Permanent Liability Camps (PLCs) in Bihar (India)' in: Occasional Papers and Reprints, No.3, ICSSR/WOTRO, (IDPAD: New Delhi, The Hague, 1999)
- 'Practising Rakshabandhan: Brothers in Ranchi, Jharkhand', in Indian Journal of Gender Studies (Vol.10, No.3, Sept.-Dec., 2003): 431-457.
- State, Society and Displaced People in South Asia (edited along with Imtiaz Ahmed and Abhijit Dasgupta) (Dhaka: The University Press 2004).
- Autobiography of An Indian Indentured Labourer. Munshi Rahman Khan (1874- 1972). Jeevan Prakash (edited along with Ellen Bal and Alok Deo Singh) (Shipra Publications: Delhi, 2005).
- Tyranny of Partition. Hindus in Bangladesh & Muslims in India (Gyan Publications: New Delhi, 2006).
- 'Voices of Difference', in: Gyanesh Kudaisya and Tan Tai Yong (eds) (2007). Partition and Post-Colonial South Asia: A Reader (3 Volumes), Routledge: Vol.III, part III.
Along with Ellen Bal: - 'No "holy cows" in Surinam: India, communal relations, identity politics, and the Hindostani Diaspora in Surinam' in SACS, vol.1, No.2 (June 2007): 17-35.
- 'De-partitioning Society: Contesting Borders of the Mind in Bangladesh and India', in: Smita Tewari Jassal and Eyal Ben-Ari (eds), The Partition Motif in Contemporary Conflicts. (Sage, New Delhi 2007): 75-97.
- 'Separated by the Partition? Muslims of British Indian Descent in Mauritius and Suriname', in: Gijsbert Oonk (Ed.), Global Indian Diasporas: Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2007): 119-149.
- 'No "Holy cows" in Surinam: Religion, Transnational Relations, Identity Politics, and the Hindostani Diaspora in Surinam' in: Diaspora Studies, Vol.1, No.1. (July-December 2007): 31-59.