Arafaat Valiani is grateful to the Kalapuya people, many of whom are now citizens of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde and the Tribes of the Siletz Indians on whose lands the University of Oregon is situated. 

Overall, my current intellectual interests focus on ethical questions of decolonization regarding biomedicine and global health, specifically genetics, human genomics and precision medicine and how these intersect with difference and equity among South Asians in the Indian subcontinent and racialized peoples in the global North.

One stream of my research explores ethical issues associated with genetic research in postcolonial India. This research contributes insights on global health ethics, as well as history of the life sciences.

A second stream of my research involves my role as Principal Investigator (and founder) of the Precision Health Equity Project. The focus of our research team, comprising faculty at Arizona State University, the University of Oregon, the University of Calgary, Trent University and Ashoka University, is to navigate the bioethical issues involved in initiatives which seek to decolonize medical genetics and human genomics involving South Asian communities globally and other racialized communities. Among other inquires, we are in the process of creating a diagnostic tool that can assess decolonial protocols in genetic screening studies taking place in the global South thus facilitating decision-making as it concerns a study population’s choice to biobank their genomic data for future study.  

Dr. Valiani's first book, entitled Militant Publics in India: Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity (Palgrave 2011), combined historical and ethnographic research methods to examine the ethics of medical, ethno-religious and 'masculine' conceptions of the body in anti-colonial movements among Indigenous (Adivasi) and caste communities in modern India and its diasporas. This body of research contributes to debates in difference, ethics and medicine, sociology of the body, and medico-political histories of South Asia. 

Before taking up his appointment in the Department of History at the University of Oregon, Arafaat Valiani was Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Williams College.

Dr. Valiani welcomes inquiries but is not currently taking graduate students. 

Killam Laureate (lifetime honour and title) bestowed by the Killam Trusts

2023 Killam Visiting Scholar, The Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, The University of Calgary (Canada).

National Science Foundation

Ford Foundation

National Endowment for the Humanities

Kluge Fellowship, Library of Congress

Wenner-Gren Foundation

American Institute of Indian Studies

Oregon Humanities Fellowship

Tom and Carol Williams Grant

Fellowship for Exceptional Research in Environmental StudiesConcordia University (Montreal, Canada) (awarded twice)

Manuscripts Under Review or in Progress:

Recoding Caste: Community, Genetic Mapping and Risk in Postgenomic India and Its Diasporas

Undone Science and Technological Innovation: The Case of Electronic Voting Machines in Postcolonial India (Co-authored with Patrick Jones).

Processions as Publics: Relgious Ceremonials, the City and Modes of Public Sphere Intervention in Colonial and Postcolonial Western India.

Media and Mobilization: Political Resistance and Its Media Forms in Western India.

Militant Publics in India: Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity (Palgrave Macmillan 2011).

"Recuperating Indian Masculinity: Mohandas Gandhi, War and the Indian Diaspora in South Africa (1899-1914)", 2014, South Asia History and Culture, Volume 5, Issue 4.

"Physical Training: Ethical Discipline and Creative Violence: Zones of Self-Mastery in the Hindu Nationalist Movement (Gujarat, India)", Culture Anthropology, Volume 25, Issue 1.

Interview, 'XQs III: A Conversation with Arafaat Valiani on Chapati Mystery’, August 2014.

'Political Identity and Violence in India', off the cuff, Social Science Research Council.

Arafaat Valiani is grateful to the Kalapuya people, many of whom are now citizens of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde and the Tribes of the Siletz Indians on whose lands the University of Oregon is situated.

Dr. Valiani will be the 2023 Killam Visiting Scholar, in the Department of Community Health Sciences, in Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. He will be working on the Precision Health Equity Project (described below).

I am a medical ethnographer and an historian of science and medicine. My current intellectual interests focus on questions of decolonization regarding biomedicine, specifically human genomics, difference and equity, and precision medicine, especially among raclialized peoples in the Americas, and South Asians globally. I am the Principal Investigator (and founder) of the Precision Health Equity Projectwhich comprises the following research, training and community-based endeavors: Employing methods from postcolonial science studies, critical histories of science and genetics, and feminist technoscience, I study how discourses about 'populations', gender and race mediate innovations in biomedicine which involve racialized communities in the Americas and globally. Recent investigations I have undertaken explore genomics and precision medicine in Canada and India, issues of health access in the context of infant and maternal health related to human milk provision in the United States and Canada, and the decolonization of obstetrics services for mothers in the global context of Chinese birth tourism in the United States and Canada (among other sites of inquiry). This body of research contributes to trandisciplinary debates about difference and intersectionality, social justice and biomedicine; the sociology of knowledge and medicine; history of science; anthropologies of science and knowledge; and South Asian Studies; and it also strives to productively impact understandings of health equity for racialized communities.

Dr. Valiani's first book, entitled Militant Publics in India: Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity (Palgrave 2011), combined historical and ethnographic research methods to examine the effects of medical, ethno-religious and 'masculine' conceptions of the body on the formation of political community among Indigenous (Adivasi) and caste communities in modern India and its diasporas. This body of research contributes to debates in difference, sociology of the body, political histories of South Asia, and broader discussions about the rise of populism which we are currently witnessing in the Americas, Europe and South Asia.

Before taking up his appointment in the Department of History at the University of Oregon, Arafaat Valiani was Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Williams College.

Ph.D. Columbia University

MA London School of Economics/School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London)

BFa Concordia University (Montréal, Canada)

2023 Killam Laureate and Visiting Scholar (Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary)

National Science Foundation

Ford Foundation 

National Endowment for the Humanities

Kluge Fellowship, Library of Congress 

Wenner-Gren Foundation

American Institute of Indian Studies 

Oregon Humanities Fellowship

Tom and Carol Williams Grant

Fellowship for Exceptional Research in Environmental StudiesConcordia University (Montreal, Canada) (awarded twice)

Published or Forthcoming:

Valiani, Arafaat A. 2022. Frontiers of Bio-Decolonization: Indigenous Data Sovereignty as a Possible Model for Community-Based Participatory Genomic Health Research for Racialized Peoples in Postgenomic Canada. Genealogy 6 (3). https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6030068  

“Recoding Caste: Population, Genetic Mapping and Risk in Postgenomic India and Its Diasporas”.

Militant Publics in India: Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity (Palgrave Macmillan 2011).

"Recuperating Indian Masculinity: Mohandas Gandhi, War and the Indian Diaspora in South Africa (1899-1914)", 2014, South Asia History and Culture, Volume 5, Issue 4. https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2014.936208   

"Physical Training: Ethical Discipline and Creative Violence: Zones of Self-Mastery in the Hindu Nationalist Movement (Gujarat, India)", Culture Anthropology, Volume 25, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15481360.2009.01052.x