Specialization:
Water; Information and Media; Development; Political Culture
Education:
UC Santa Barbara: Ph.D., Anthropology, 2019
UCSB: M.A., Anthropology, 2010
Ohio State University: B.A., Anthropology and English, 2005
Bio:
Lindsay Vogt is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, University of Zurich. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2019. Her doctoral project, “New Water in New India: How Does Philanthropy Re-Cast Water and Citizenship?,” was based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork at various sites of techno-informational development in India which are funded by sources associated with the Indian high-tech sector. She is currently preparing a manuscript on the basis of that work. Lindsay has taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Emory University in the departments of Anthropology, Environmental Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, and Comparative Literature.
Research:
I am a cultural anthropologist whose research draws upon the anthropology of IT (its political economy and cultures of use), critical development studies, and media studies. My central research interests are water and the cultures surrounding its uses and symbology, development politics, and media reception in India. With my doctoral dissertation research, I examine national-scale media campaigns and information-sharing initiatives on water and sanitation
in order to understand evolving conceptions of social citizenship in India, especially the role of information and its dissemination technologies therein. My research combines an analysis of the larger field of national-scale messaging on water and sanitation made by NGO, unilateral, state, and corporate actors along with a more specific investigation on the participation of IT sector entrepreneurs and institutions in influencing national politics and refashioning popular conceptions of social citizenship through their information dissemination and philanthropic work on water in India.