Doctor Manpreet Janeja
Nationality: India
Year: 2000
Subject Area: Social Sciences
My Wingate scholarship facilitated my fieldwork in Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Calcutta (India) for my doctoral thesis (2004) at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, on Bengali Hindu and Muslim identities through food. The fieldwork also led to the production of three documentaries, one of which - Celebrating Fat - was screened at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery (2002) and the Cambridge Foodomics Public Lectures (2007). My monograph, based on my thesis, is currently under preparation. Since my PhD, I have held a Rausing Research Fellowship at the Department of Social Anthropology (2005-6), and a Research Associateship (2005-6) at Jesus College, Cambridge. I have been awarded a life membership at Jesus College. I currently hold the Eugénie Strong Fellowship at Girton College, Cambridge, where I am Director of Studies in Social Anthropology, and an elected member of the College Council. My current research examines the emergent forms of identity of immigrant groups through food in contemporary Britain.