Smita Tewari Jassal has been teaching Social Anthropology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey since 2009. From 2016 -2019 she was Professor of Sociology at Delhi’s Ambedkar University before returning to METU, Ankara. She also taught Anthropology at several universities in USA, including Columbia and Brandeis Universities.
Her research interests include caste, gender, collective memory, marginality, oral/ vernacular traditions, shrines and religiosity.
She held research positions at
- Delhi’s Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) 2013-2014
- Hebrew University’s Truman Institute for Peace in Jerusalem 2002-2004
- Centre for Women’s Development Studies, Delhi (CSDS) 1995-2001.
Smita Tewari Jassal is the author of:
- Islamic Conversation: Sohbet and Ethics in Contemporary Turkey (Routledge, UK. 2019)
- Unearthing Gender: Folksongs of North India (Duke UP 2012)
- Daughters of the Earth: Women and Land in Uttar Pradesh (Manohar. 2001).
- Co-edited with Halil Turan (eds.) Past Connections, Contemporary Debates: India and Turkey (Routledge UK 2017)
- Co-edited with Eyal Ben-Ari (eds). The Partition Motif in Contemporary Conflicts: India-Pakistan, Germany, Israel-Palestine (Sage.2007)
She is currently working on two manuscripts – one on caste memory, and another on healing at saint shrines in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
