Angana P. Chatterji | |
---|---|
Born | November 1966 Calcutta, India |
Residence | United States |
Citizenship | Indian |
Education |
MA (Political Science) PhD (Humanities) |
Alma mater | CIIS, San Francisco |
Notable work | Violent Gods, Buried Evidence |
Partner(s) | Richard Shapiro |
Website | anganachatterji.net |
Angana P. Chatterji (born November 1966) is an Indian anthropologist, activist, and feminist historian. Chatterji's research is closely related to her advocacy work and focuses mainly on India. An anthropologist by profession, she has studied majoritarianism, gendered violence, and human rights in Indian Kashmir and communal violence in Orissa. In the context of the United States, she has researched issues related to diaspora and identity politics in American society. She co-founded and was a co-convener of the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-Administered Kashmir from April 2008-December 2012.
In 2012, she co-founded with Shashi Buluswar the Armed Conflict Resolution and People's Rights Project, housed at the University of California at Berkeley. The Project co-authored its first research report in 2015, "Access to Justice for Women: India’s Response to Sexual Violence in Conflict and Mass Social Unrest" with the Human Rights Law Clinic at Boalt Law School. In the same year, it also published a monograph, Conflicted Democracies and Gendered Violence: The Right to Heal.
Angana Chatterji is the daughter of Bhola Chatterji (1922–1992), a socialist and Indian freedom fighter and Anubha Sengupta Chatterji. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Gooroodas Banerjee, a judge and the first Indian Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta. She grew up in the communally-tense neighborhood of Narkeldanga and Rajabazar in Kolkata. Her family included mixed-caste parents and grandparents, and aunts who were Muslim and Catholic.
Chatterji moved from Kolkata to Delhi in 1984, and then to the USA in the 1990s. She retains her Indian citizenship and is a permanent resident of the United States. Her formal education comprises a BA and an MA in Political Science. She also holds a PhD in the Humanities from CIIS, where she later taught anthropology. Her husband is Richard Shapiro.