UCLA

My doctoral dissertation, “Knowledge-Migrants between South Asia and Europe: The Production of Technical and Scientific Ideas among Students and Scientists, 1919-1945,” analyzes the role of Afghan students and German scientists in producing and exchanging ideas about fine arts, medicine, political ideologies, and science. The main goal of my dissertation is to address, using case studies, what the role of travel and circulation was in producing ideas among Afghans in Germany and Germans in Afghanistan, how ideas emerged, which institutions and practices were involved in producing these ideas, and how these ideas circulated and impacted the social and intellectual fabric of Europe and South Asia. My dissertation argues that the resultant knowledge among these actors was neither fixed nor systematic, but rather a practical activity that was located in the routines of everyday life. These everyday practices are, in turn, important to examine because they uncover overlapping and shared intellectual, material, and political networks that circulated ideas further afield than just within the respective national bounds of Afghanistan, India, or Germany.