Anindita Chatterjee is a human geographer with research and teaching interests in global political economy, intellectual property law and the politics and geographies of knowledge and cultural production, as well as South Asian history and politics.
Her doctoral dissertation examines disputes over a cancer medicine and course packs, and argues that contrary to intellectual property law’s framing of copying as a transgressive and hostile act, copies of medicines (generics) and educational texts (photocopied books and ‘contraband’ pdfs) simultaneously reflect, respond to, and resist uneven and unjust geographies of development and law that lock knowledge in the vaults of transnational corporations. Her research underlines that what gets valued as an original and what gets denigrated as a copy is entangled in relationships of power.
She also shows that while international economic laws and institutions often work to the detriment of countries In the Global South, they push back through the assertion and language of sovereignty, which while fragile and perpetually at risk under global neoliberal capitalism, is used nevertheless to articulate national developmental priorities, and challenge established meanings and norms in international law. She is currently working on two articles based on her dissertation.
Dr Chatterjee received her PhD from the Department of Geography, Environment & Society at University of Minnesota. She has an MA in Development Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi and a Bachelor’s degree in Law from Symbiosis Law College, Pune. Prior to pursuing her Master’s, she worked in a non-profit organization in Madhya Pradesh, India on questions of public education for two years. Before joining the University of Chicago, she was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota.
She is an avid follower of all things Bollywood, and firmly believes that chai tea latte is an abomination.