Abhishek Ranjan Datta

Abhishek Ranjan Datta is a Clarendon and Lincoln-Kingsgate Graduate Scholar at Lincoln College. His research focuses on mapping urban transformations in India and the broader South Asian region, particularly their impact on the region’s youth. His interests span education, skill-training, unemployment, urban migration, consumerism, globalisation, new/social media and emerging youth cultures. Abhishek‘s doctoral project explores practices of ‘self-making’ among urban youth in Delhi, focussing on how the discourse and infrastructure of ‘preparation’ (taiyaree, in Hindi-Urdu) in Delhi’s coaching centres shape middle-class aspirations and propel rhizomatic practices of mobility and self-realisation. The project aims to revisit and unpack ‘self-making’ to highlight its hybridity, instability and discontinuities. His past projects include research on South Asian queer cultures and English language use and multilingualism in urban India.