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Anurag Mazumdar

Assistant Professor

Email anurag.mazumdar@jgu.edu.in
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ORCID ID 0000-0002-4818-5628
Key Expertise Platform urbanism, digital geography, urban technology, labour studies, class relations, mobility research
Biography

Anurag Mazumdar is a critical human geographer and an Assistant Professor in the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities. His interdisciplinary scholarly and political work examines how algorithmic governance in urban spaces of the majority world shape and are reshaped by labouring communities, particularly looking at how digital platform-based gig workers live, contest and reconstitute overdetermined digital futures. He is currently working on his book project, tentatively titled People as Platforms: Taxis, Mobility and Politics in Delhi, by looking at the political dimensions of digital platform work, namely how gig workers in Delhi produce digital platforms as social infrastructures of political imagination. His work has been published in the The Geographical Journal, Society and Space, Economic & Political Weekly, among other venues. In his previous avatar, he has worked as an editor, journalist and development sector researcher.

 

Society, Space, Culture (SSC-C-302)

LH-C-312: Sociology of Science, Technology & Digital Society

Robinson Research Award, Department of Geography, The Ohio State University (2016)

Taffe Research Award, Department of Geography, The Ohio State University (2016)

Smitu Kothari Memorial Prize for Best Dissertation in Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (2012)

Waqar Pyare Khan Prize for Best Student Documentary titled ‘Bharatmata Ki Jai’, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (2012)

George Beatty Fellowship in Geography, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2023 ($11,040)

Joseph Russell Fellowship, Department of Geography & GIS, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2022 ($8,576)

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) Foundation Studentship, 2021 ($10,000)

Lakshmanan Chatterjee Fellowship for Outstanding Graduate Students, The Ohio State University, 2017 ($2,000)

Paper Title: Optimism in dis/empowerment: How Historical Contexts of Work and Service Shape Politics of Gig Workers in Delhi NCR, Digital Subjects & Citizens: Recasting democracies in networked societies, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), (April 8 – 10), Delhi

Paper Title: Tracking Marginal Lives as a Prehistory of Platforms: GPS Meters in Autorickshaws, Working Class Lives in Delhi, January 12, Indian Institute of Human Settlements, Urban Annual Research Conference 2024, Bengaluru, India

(Under consideration with Environment & Planning D: Society and Space) “Not a Good Place: Reinscribing Urban Restructuring in Platform Taxi Work in Delhi, India”

Paper Title: “That’s Not a Good Place”: Platform Urbanism(s) and Urban Dispossession in Delhi, Session title: Geographies of Digital Capitalism 2: Labor, March 25, American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting 2023, Denver, USA

Paper Title: Infrastructures of Trust: Reading Taxi Drivers and Riders in Delhi-NCR Pushing Boundaries-Holding Space: Mentoring and Writing Workshop in Feminist Geography (June 15 – 17), Sambhaavnaa Institute, India, as part of the multi-sited 4th Feminist Geography Conference Pushing Boundaries, 2022.

Mazumdar, A. Layer of face, and other optimisms of platform work. The Geographical Journal, 189 (1): 143–160.

Paper Title: Relations of Data and the City: A Possible Pre-history of Platforms and Datafication in Delhi-NCR, Session title: Comparing Data-driven Urban regimes and Digital experiences, August 30, The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual International Conference, Newcastle, United Kingdom.

Paper Title: #“Going Home”: Constructions of a Digital-Urban Platform Interface in Delhi-NCR, Internet Researchers’ Conference 5th Edition on #Home, May 27, Centre for Internet and Society, India [Online]

Paper Title: Gaps in Dis/embedding Platforms: How Ride-Hailing Actors Experience Slowing Down Digitality, Session on Feeding the Digital Growth Machine 3: Land and Embeddedness in the Smart City, March 1, American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting 2022, [Online]

Paper Title: Between nowhere and somewhere: Locating Ride-Hailing Platforms in Delhi, Session on The Quotidian Others and the Digital, February 24, Digital Humanities Alliance for Research and Teaching Innovations Annual Conference [Online]

Mazumdar, A. “Between Algorithms and the Streets: The Everyday Politics of Ride-Hailing Taxis in India.” In Urban Platforms and the Future City Transformations in Infrastructure, Governance, Knowledge and Everyday Life, edited by Mike Hodson et al, 235–47. London & New York: Routledge

Paper Title: Authoring Platforms from the (South): Towards a Postcolonial Framework for Digital Geographies, Session on Politics and Identity in Digital Geographies, American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting 2021, [Online]

Mazumdar, A. “Decoding the Social in the Digital Dilemma.” SocietyandSpace.org, November 16, https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/decoding-the-social-in-the- digital-dilemma.

Paper Title: Private Meets Public Platforms, Delhi Digital Conclave, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-Delhi), Delhi, December 5 [Zoom]

Paper Title: Platforms Hit the Streets: The Everyday Politics of Ride-Hailing Taxis in India, Urban Platforms and the Future City, Sustainable Consumption Institute and University of Manchester (Feb 28 – 1 March), Manchester, UK

Paper Title: Networking Cabs in a Platform Economy: The Old and New Taxi Industries in Mumbai, India, Session on Platform Urbanism: Logistics, Mobilities and Enactment, American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting 2018, New Orleans, USA

Mazumdar, A. The City is not a Closed Box: Elphinstone Tragedy and Assumptions in Urban Policy. Economic and Political Weekly, 52 (48).

Mazumdar, A. Review of Nair, Manjusha. 2016. “Undervalued Dissent: Informal Workers’ Politics in India.” Economic and Political Weekly, 52 (30): 33-34

Why the Problems of Uber, Ola Drivers are far from Over, The Wire, 5 March.

Mazumdar, A. Review of Chatterjee, Ipsita. 2008. “Displacement, Revolution and the New Urban Condition: Theories and Case Studies.” Economic and Political Weekly, 50 (31): 29–30.

Mazumdar, A. Review of Chatterjee, M and A Mukhopadhyay (ed.). 2015. “Urban Development in Howrah: Socio-Economic Perspectives.” Economic and Political Weekly. 50 (48): 41-43.

Mazumdar, A. Barnaparichay – A Mall in Progress, A Street in Transition. Global South-SEPHIS e-magazine. 9(3): 11–18.
Email anurag.mazumdar@jgu.edu.in
ORCID ID 0000-0002-4818-5628
Key Expertise Platform urbanism, digital geography, urban technology, labour studies, class relations, mobility research
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