I was raised in the kind of multicultural, hyphenated universe I like to think about. My mother is from India, my father from the U.S. I spent most of my childhood in South Carolina reading novels about girl detectives and faraway places. After I received my BA in history from Yale, I went on to pursue my PhD in literary studies at Stanford. My first academic job took me back to Yale, where I served as an assistant professor of postcolonial literature in its English department.

In 2010 I switched hemispheres to join the Australian National University. At the ANU I’m based in the College of Asia and the Pacific in its School of Culture, History and Language, where I belong to the program in Gender, Media and Cultural Studies. I’m currently my School’s deputy director for education, and I also serve as the deputy director of the ANU’s South Asia Research Institute.

Making sense of how best to live in a globalising world has always been both a personal and a scholarly project. My book, Fiction Across Borders, squares up to the question of how it might be possible to imagine “otherness” in ethical ways. I built on this research when I investigated how transitional justice movements might potentially benefit from the perspectives of “outsiders.” Today, I explore yoga as a powerful and creative site of cosmopolitan encounter between India and the world.

The Indian textiles you’ll see on these pages — wrinkles, creases, and all — are part of my family history. Suitcases have swept them on journeys that criss-cross India, Hong Kong, the US, and Australia. I love the way fabrics lavish care on borders, offering us elaborate surprises that unfold in the margins.

I also have — according to them — two awesome kids. One of them loves to read and fills up our house with ceramic penguins, wombats, cats, mice, and even gardens. The other has taught me more about cars than I ever thought I’d know.