Professor Parikh’s research focuses on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and capitalism, and the politics of state and global interventions (such as public health, humanitarian aid, and legal reforms) that emerge to manage, protect, and mold populations. Her primary research has been the history and ethnography of sexuality, gender, and class in Uganda, East Africa with particular interest in how they have been shaped by the HIV epidemic and aggressive efforts to track, measure, and control what has become the most studied modern epidemic. She is currently writing an ethnography on black masculinity along the TransAfrica Highway based on over 20 years of research. She is also involved in an on-going research project on commercial sex and mobility in HIV hotspots in truck stops, fishing communities, and sugar growing regions in Uganda.
Shanti Parikh
Chair of African and African-American Studies Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology and of African and African-American Studies