Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India

Please join us for a discussion of Experimental Times by Hemangini Gupta, Lecturer in Gender and Global Politics with a book presentation by the author followed by responses from:

• Janaki Srinivasan, Associate Professor, Digital South Asian Studies, Uni of Oxford
• Rahul Rao, Reader in International Political Thought, Uni of St Andrews
• Alex Taylor, Reader in Design Informatics, Uni of Edinburgh

Experimental Times is an in-depth ethnography of the transformation of Bengaluru/Bangalore from a site of "backend" IT work to an aspirational global city of enterprise and innovation. The book journeys alongside the migrant workers, technologists, and entrepreneurs who shape and survive the dreams of a "Startup India" knitted through office work, at networking meetings and urban festivals, and across sites of leisure in the city. Tracking techno-futures that involve automation and impending precarity, Hemangini Gupta details the everyday forms of experimentation, care, and friendship that sustain and reproduce life and labor in India's current economy.

A reception will follow the event.