2022 Summer Graduate Research Fellow: Emily Russell

Emily Russell is a graduate student in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University and received a 2022 summer graduate research fellowship from the Center for South Asia. 

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Russell's project, Semi-Sovereignty in Indigenous India, examines the models of “semi-sovereignty” that develop in stateless and state-limited communities where community strategies of provision and resistance prosper. Russell is exploring variation in the relationship between land and natural resource protection and state violence across these governance forms.

The grant from CSA allows Russell to travel across differently-governed districts in Madhya Pradesh and meet activists, community members, lawyers, NGOs, and government officials to pilot her study. It also supports her as she conducts archival analysis into the colonial origins of contemporary state violence and exclusion and collects relevant cartographic data from various commissions in India.