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 Itinerant Refuge 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 refugee 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 been published in American Anthropologist.
Previously, Dr. Adhikari was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 2019 to 2021. She was awarded the 2021-2022 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellowship and was named the 2021 ACLS Centennial Fellow in the Dynamics of Place.
