Prerna Pradhan
Education
Professional Bio
Prerna Pradhan specializes in studies of gender, religion, and ritual performance in South Asia, with particular interest in textual traditions of Hinduism (female-centric Saktism and Non-Canonical Laukika), as well as the cults of indigenous goddesses who have been co-opted within the fold of Hindu pantheon. Her research interest addresses the convergence of religion, gender performance and political discourse in North-East India and South Asia. She is currently working on a manuscript tentatively titled, Blood and Divinity: The Menstrual Construction of Goddess Kamakhya in Assam.
She earned her MPhil and PhD degrees in Theatre and Performance Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research has been supported by the Maulana Azad National Fellowship, as well as grants from UNESCO and European Association for South Asian Studies. She has previously taught in the departments of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Delhi and Tezpur University (Assam). Her research has appeared in Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society, and she has presented her work at conferences and lecture series in Europe, North America, and Asia. Her forthcoming publication includes a book chapter in an anthology titled Identity, Politics, and Narratives of Belonging: Northeast India in Literature and Contemporary Discourses. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) at New Delhi from 2023-24.
Her M.Phil research focused on Kumari (Living Goddess), a prepubescent Vajrayana Buddhist girl worshipped as the incarnation of the Hindu goddess, Taleju, by Hindu and Buddhist communities of Nepal. During 2012-2017, she undertook ethnographic fieldwork across multiple sites in Nepal, along with archival work at the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS, Tribhuvan University) and Nepal Academy. Her work examined the relocation of the Kumari worship from the Newar community space to the Royal Palace of Kathmandu in the eighteenth century, with specific focus on the patronage of rituals, Kumari’s presence and gender performativity in the political landscape of Nepal.
Her doctoral research examined the ritual performance of Ambubachi, a festival devoted to the divine menstruation of Kamakhya, a Sakti goddess. During 2017-23, she undertook ethnography at Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati and surrounding regions in Assam, the northeastern state of India. Putting her fieldwork in dialogue with longstanding textual traditions of Hinduism and indigenous formations, she focused on the ritual sequestering of Kamakhya during Ambubachi. She examined this seclusion as a deliberate accommodation of female-centric Sakti ritual practices within the Vedic dichotomy of sacred and stigmatized bodies. More broadly, her work also analyzed contemporary practices of menstrual isolation in Assamese society.