Presentation: 

Counting myself among those who rely on empirically-informed guesswork, I have been, and to an extent remain, a South Asianist with an interest in India. However, I have developed an interest in Europe, including the Nordic region. Simultaneously, I have cultivated an interest in natural history as distinguished from social science and history. Having developed a taste for science, I would like to look more closely at the way in which communities of knowledge rise and thrive. Thus, my present interest covers the study of birders and birdwatching in the Nordic region and in Asia. Birders constitute a community of knowledge and practice. Many are given to twitching. I would like to pursue a study of birders not only through the standard tricks of the interdisciplinary trade, but also through Science and Technology Studies. As for fieldwork, I have visited Japan in 2015 and intend to visit China in 2019. The photo below by Ulhas Anand is from a recent sitting with the non-twitching type of birders from Bangalore. On the table is Grimmett, Inskipp and Inskipp Birds of the Indian Subcontinent and opposite to MB Krishna lies a copy of my article “Narratives of Nature as Metaphors of Society”, Folk 46/47:121-41, 2004-05 brought along by Shyamal Lakshminarayanan, who is sitting next to me.