Dr. Kena Wani

Education

• BA (Political Science), M.S. University of Baroda
• MA (Political Science), Savitri Phule Pune University
• MPhil (Social Science), Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC)
• PhD (History), Duke University, USA

Profile

Kena is a historian by training. She has previously taught at O.P. Jindal Global University as Assistant Professor of History. Following her doctoral studies, she was an ICAS:MP postdoctoral fellow in New Delhi. Broadly, her research examines the intersections between State, business, and development practices in the middle decades of the twentieth century, specifically in Ahmedabad and its surrounding rural/agrarian regions.

In her current monograph project, she intends to build upon her doctoral work by critically studying various mid-twentieth-century developmental programmes in western India and their technocratic and managerialist lineages. The project will also explore the ways in which these programmes came to incubate certain techniques and ideas associated with—what is now broadly identified—as neoliberalism.

Research Interests

Kena’s teaching and research areas include 19th and 20th century histories of India across the colonial postcolonial divide with a focus on capitalism, twentieth-century developmentalism, rural and agrarian reforms, labour and automation, and histories of business and managerialism. Along with these interests, she has also worked on collaborative projects on the politics and history of caste, food practices, and issues of public
representation in western India.

Publications

Peer-reviewed articles: 

• Wani, Kena. 2023. “Pedagogies of Development, Conceptions of Efficiency: Modern Managerialism in Industrial Ahmedabad, 1950s–1960s.” Enterprise &  Society, 1–34.
• Wani, Kena. 2022. “Trustees of the Nation? Business, Philanthropy and Changing Modes of Legitimacy in Colonial and Postcolonial Western India”. The Indian Economic & Social History Review 59 (1): 5–36.