V Varun Chaudhry
Brandeis University
V Varun Chaudhry (they/he) is a cultural anthropologist whose work focuses on gender, race, sexuality, and class in the United States. His research and teaching focuses on the institutionalization of racialized and gendered categories and logics in US-based nonprofit and funding organizations, as well as the US academy. V's writing spans academic scholarship, organizational training materials, and public scholarship. Their writing appears in GLQ: Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies; Signs: journal of women and culture in society; Transgender Studies Quarterly (TSQ); Feminist Theory; Feminist Anthropology; differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies; American Anthropologist; Critical Inquiry; and The Foundation Review. V is the primary author of Transforming Inclusion: An Organizational Guide, published by the Leeway Foundation in 2018 as a resource for cultural organizations, foundations, and feminist and LGBTQ advocacy organizations to better affirm transgender and gender nonconforming people; Out in Research: A Guide to LGBTQ Market Research, published by Suzy, Incorporated in 2021; and Funding Trans Resilience, based on ethnographic work with the Trans Resilience Fund (a project of the Gender Justice Fund in Philly), in 2022; and a forthcoming 10-year retrospective for the Trans Justice Funding Project. V has also conducted community-based research and consulted with Bread and Roses Community Fund in Philadelphia.
V Varun Chaudhry (they/he) is a cultural anthropologist whose work focuses on gender, race, sexuality, and class in the United States. His research and teaching focuses on the institutionalization of racialized and gendered categories and logics in US-based nonprofit and funding organizations, as well as the US academy. V's writing spans academic scholarship, organizational training materials, and public scholarship. Their writing appears in GLQ: Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies; Signs: journal of women and culture in society; Transgender Studies Quarterly (TSQ); Feminist Theory; Feminist Anthropology; differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies; American Anthropologist; Critical Inquiry; and The Foundation Review. V is the primary author of Transforming Inclusion: An Organizational Guide, published by the Leeway Foundation in 2018 as a resource for cultural organizations, foundations, and feminist and LGBTQ advocacy organizations to better affirm transgender and gender nonconforming people; Out in Research: A Guide to LGBTQ Market Research, published by Suzy, Incorporated in 2021; and Funding Trans Resilience, based on ethnographic work with the Trans Resilience Fund (a project of the Gender Justice Fund in Philly), in 2022; and a forthcoming 10-year retrospective for the Trans Justice Funding Project. V has also conducted community-based research and consulted with Bread and Roses Community Fund in Philadelphia.
Lily Mengesha
Tufts University
Lily Mengesha is is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, and Affiliate faculty in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora. Her research and teaching live at the intersection of critical Indigenous studies, gender and sexuality studies and performance studies. Her first book, Critical Dreaming: Feminist Performances Across the Indigenous Americas (NYU Press, 2025), is a transnational study of Indigenous artists that stages the urgency of embodied ways of knowing amidst the colonial decimation of culture, life, and land. Revealing the long and interconnected patterns of feminicide across the Americas, Mengesha demonstrates how contemporary feminist artists use performance to sustain life amid devastating attempts at extermination. The book argues for dreaming as a tool to seek accountability for harm, revise colonial history, and manifest Indigenous futures. You can find her other writing in the Journal for Dramatic Theory and Criticism, ASAP Journal, Canadian Theatre Review and The Drama Review.
Dr. Mengesha's research has been supported by various awards, grants and fellowships including the New England Humanities Consortium, the Center for Humanities at Tufts, MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the American Society for Theatre Research, the Joukowsky Family Foundation, the Cogut Center for the Humanities, the Pembroke Center for the Research and Teaching of Women, the Social Science Research Council and Mellon Mays Foundation. She currently serves on the advisory board of Tufts’ Women Gender and Sexuality Studies program, as well as a member of the Executive Committee for the American Society of Theatre Research.
Lily Mengesha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, and Affiliate faculty in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora. Her research and teaching live at the intersection of critical Indigenous studies, gender and sexuality studies and performance studies. Her first book, Critical Dreaming: Feminist Performances Across the Indigenous Americas (NYU Press, 2025), is a transnational study of Indigenous artists that stages the urgency of embodied ways of knowing amidst the colonial decimation of culture, life, and land. Revealing the long and interconnected patterns of feminicide across the Americas, Mengesha demonstrates how contemporary feminist artists use performance to sustain life amid devastating attempts at extermination. The book argues for dreaming as a tool to seek accountability for harm, revise colonial history, and manifest Indigenous futures. You can find her other writing in the Journal for Dramatic Theory and Criticism, ASAP Journal, Canadian Theatre Review and The Drama Review.
Dr. Mengesha's research has been supported by various awards, grants and fellowships including the New England Humanities Consortium, the Center for Humanities at Tufts, MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the American Society for Theatre Research, the Joukowsky Family Foundation, the Cogut Center for the Humanities, the Pembroke Center for the Research and Teaching of Women, the Social Science Research Council and Mellon Mays Foundation. She currently serves on the advisory board of Tufts’ Women Gender and Sexuality Studies program, as well as a member of the Executive Committee for the American Society of Theatre Research.
Sonal Sharma
Tufts University
Sonal Sharma is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Tufts University. He holds a PhD in sociology from Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include capitalism, labor informality, and social reproduction with a focus on how class, caste, race, and gender shape labor politics.
Currently, he is working on his book that critically examines domestic workers’ movement in India and South Africa. Through a comparative lens, he explores how domestic workers mobilize for labor rights, the role of the state in shaping their working conditions, and the influence of trade unions and NGOs on their struggles. His writings have been published in Critical Sociology, Sociology of Development, South Asian History and Culture, and Economic and Political Weekly, among others.
Sonal Sharma is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Tufts University. He holds a PhD in sociology from Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include capitalism, labor informality, and social reproduction with a focus on how class, caste, race, and gender shape labor politics.
Currently, he is working on his book that critically examines domestic workers’ movement in India and South Africa. Through a comparative lens, he explores how domestic workers mobilize for labor rights, the role of the state in shaping their working conditions, and the influence of trade unions and NGOs on their struggles. His writings have been published in Critical Sociology, Sociology of Development, South Asian History and Culture, and Economic and Political Weekly, among others.