People > Advisory Board > Urmila Mohan

Urmila Mohan is an anthropologist and curator of material culture and religion who studies textiles, religion and heritage in India and Indonesia. As adjunct faculty, she teaches courses on museum anthropology and history at New York University. Urmila is the Founder and Managing Editor of The Jugaad Project and has published articles and chapters on materiality, praxis and aesthetics in the context of religion. Her teaching and research interests include a focus on India and Indonesia through the study of Material and Visual Culture, Religion, Praxeology and Power.

Urmila's publications include Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism (Brill Research Perspectives, 2019), a co-edited volume The Material Subject: Rethinking Bodies and Objects in Motion (Routledge 2021), Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles (University of Chicago Press/BGC 2018), and with J.-P. Warnier, “Editorial; Marching the Devotional Subject: The Bodily and Material Cultures of Religion” (Special Issue, Journal of Material Culture). In 2018 she curated an exhibition on the ceremonial uses of textiles collected by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in 1930s Bali, Indonesia.

A transdisciplinary scholar who works across anthropology, history, design and art, Urmila develops and teach courses that connect these fields. An example of her approach can be found here. Her research has been funded by Victoria and Albert Museum (Nehru Trust for Indian Collections), London; Asian Cultural Council, New York; Coby Foundation Ltd., New York, and Rotary International. 

email: um6@nyu.edu