Assistant Professor; On Leave FA22
She/Her/Hers
retika@umich.edu
Office Information:
Haven Hall, 1045
Fields of study: critical refugee studies, Asian American studies, multi-sited ethnography, humanitarianism, displacement, postindustrial United States, South Asian Borderlands.
Asian Pacific Islander American Studies;
American Culture
About
Retika Adhikari is a cultural anthropologist and works at the intersection of anthropology and ethnic studies. Her research explores the limits of contemporary humanitarian interventions and the processes of refugee racialization in the American Rust Belt cities. Dr. Adhikari’s book manuscript Refugee Crossings examines the UN-led project of resettlement of Bhutanese refugees in the United States. Drawing on fieldwork conducted with Bhutanese refugees as they move through the nodes of their resettlement trail—from camps in Nepal to resettlement cities in Central New York—her project argues that refugees understand their political and humanitarian status as unresolved even after the UN and US refugee programs declare them resolved. Her research has most recently been published in American Anthropologist.
Dr. Adhikari joins the Department of American Culture following a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She was recently awarded the 2021-2022 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellowship and has been named the 2021 ACLS Centennial Fellow in the Dynamics of Place.
