Postdoctoral Fellow

The Capitalism Studies program at UNC Charlotte, with the support of the Dowd Foundation, Inc., is pleased to be able to host a postdoctoral fellow, who conducts original research, teaches undergraduate courses, and offers other service to the program.

Our current postdoctoral fellow is Dr. Ipshita Ghosh.

Dr. Ghosh graduated with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Syracuse University in 2022. She also holds a Master’s in Public Administration (Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 2018), an MSc in Contemporary India Studies (University of Oxford, 2014) and a BA (Honors) in English (LSR college, University of Delhi, 2010).

An economic and business anthropologist, Dr Ghosh’s research interests include global entrepreneurship, digital capitalism, venture capital, development, and future of work, with a geographical focus on India and the United States. Her current and future research are informed by three intersecting questions: 1. In what ways do contemporary capitalist practices like technological entrepreneurship reproduce and reshape existing forms of inequality and structural biases? 2. How is capitalism perceived as an antidote to such inequities–i.e., in what ways do capitalist formations also become sites for humanitarian interventions and future-making? 3. In what ways do entrepreneurial and techno-financial projects overlap with discourses of global development?

At UNC Charlotte, Dr. Ghosh is working on her book manuscript, tentatively titled Startup Futures: Entrepreneurs, Investors and Imaginaries of Care in Global India. This book is based on Dr Ghosh’s ethnographic work with Indian tech startups, which she completed as a part of her doctoral studies. The book investigates how startup cultures in India, driven by both state support and venture capital, produce a distinct vision of entrepreneurship that creates new forms of humanitarianism and future-making.

Concurrently, Dr. Ghosh is also pursuing two new research projects. The first project focuses on the emerging meanings of work in a digital economy. Inspired by emerging movements in job markets, this new research focuses on how people leaving traditional workforces are using digital technologies to seek other kinds of labor and pursue new meanings in what they do. The second project draws on her dissertation work to examine ideas of well-being and good life among health-tech founders in the post-pandemic landscape. In addition, Dr. Ghosh is also teaching an interdisciplinary course titled “Entrepreneurship, Capitalism and Global Development.”

Dr. Ghosh is currently a board member of the Society for Economic Anthropology where she is a co-founder of the “Mergers and Acquisitions” blog and podcast.