Paridhi David Massey’s research interest lie in the study of colonial cities, pilgrimage centers and religious tourism. She is particularly interested in the study of urban communities, religious spaces, spatial politics of cityscapes, and urban technologies of rule. Her doctoral research is based on the region of Braj- Mathura as a city and pilgrimage center in the nineteenth century. She plans to look into the historical evolution of the region of Braj beginning from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century while trying to understand the same through the process of urbanism and city-formation and its relationship with sacred-spaces. Paridhi has a background in the discipline of History, with an undergraduate degree from St. Stephen’s College, a post-graduate degree in Modern Indian History and an MPhil from University of Delhi. Her MPhil dissertation titled “Women Writing Self-Respect Histories, 1926-47”, was an attempt to investigate alternative ways of writing the histories of gender and caste through a critical reading of women’s narratives in the Self-Respect Movement in Tamilnadu. Through a literary analysis of women’s writings, her work explored questions of space, a reading of the inner mechanics of caste, conjugality and patriarchy in the everyday life of women. In addition to fluency in Hindi and English, she has basic linguistic skills in Sanskrit and Tamil language.
