Gill's research examines the intersections of masculinity, modernity, transnational migration, and popular culture in India. Gill is also an award-winning filmmaker and has made ethnographic films screened at international film festivals and on television channels worldwide, including BBC World News, Doordarshan (Indian National TV) and PBS.
Disillusioned by lofty promises for power and control, Gill’s research shows how Punjabi men contend with patriarchy: by submitting to it, by attempting to transgress it, by migrating away from it, or by coming undone by it.
Based on long-term ethnographic research in and around Punjab and its capital city Chandigarh, Gill offers a deeper insight into the worlds of middle-class Punjabi men and how they come of age.
"On one hand, masculinity is produced through pervasive patriarchal violence," adds Gill. "On the other, it’s underlined with intimacy and tenderness men express freely towards each other without the fear of homophobic ridicule."
Gill’s research exposes an indictment of patriarchy as a system that not only oppresses women but also constricts men’s choices regarding their intimate and sexual lives. Whereas outward transnational migration from Punjab is historically understood through frameworks of political persecution and economic desperation, Gill considers male migration as gendered phenomenon by exploring how it offers a strategy for evading patriarchal responsibilities. In addition, Gill also looks at how male migration reconfigures the lives of those who are left behind.
Gill received the Point Foundation Scholarship, Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies Performing Arts Fellowship, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars' Career Enhancement Fellowship, and the Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship. He also is the current president of the Society for Visual Anthropology.
