Gourav Krishna Nandi

Gourav is a doctoral candidate in the History of science and medicine program. His research focuses on the histories of public health, health policy, and postcolonial governance in twentieth century South Asia. His dissertation explores practices and discourses of public health in the city of Calcutta, bookended by the nationalist movement and the Bengal Famine in the 1940s through the first decade after partition and independence of India. The dissertation explores how existing (regionally and historically contextual) norms of class, morality and citizenship shaped emerging policies around health and hygiene in the city. At the same time, it traces how those whom the urban municipal government attempted to manage and control negotiated and resisted top-down public health interventions.

 

Before coming to Yale, Gourav completed an MPhil at the University of Cambridge, during which he worked on the post-Cold War politics of India’s polio eradication campaign. He was born and brought up in a suburb of Kolkata, and previously completed his BA in history of science, philosophy and a minor in mathematics from Montana State University, Bozeman.