Rajat is a PhD candidate and Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar in Theatre & Performance Studies at York University, where his research focus is on voice, vocal traditions, digital practices, possible/impossible world-making and social sci-fi filmmaking in rural north India. He is an anthropologist and a filmmaker with an MA in Visual Anthropology from Tallinn University.
Rajat's recent chapter "Staging Care: Dying, Death and Possible Futures" examines sensory audiovisual ethnography in his study of the distinctive politics-of-care staged by families who anticipate and create the possibility of Moksha for their dying relative in Kashi, India's holy city. He is the co-founder of Emergent Futures CoLab, a laboratory for transdisciplinary experimentation and collaborative future-making, where he is curating Talking Uncertainty (an online talk series/podcast). Rajat also co-edits the 'Performance Ethnography' section of Centre for Imaginative Ethnography. Since 2011, he has worked on Espírito Kashi, a project that facilitates performative spaces for rural Indian communities to critically re-imagine folklore, envision new socialities, digital realities, decolonize archives, and film futures.
