Dr. Abhijeet Paul is lecturer in South and Southeast Asian studies at UC Berkeley and lecturer in ethnic studies in the Peralta Community College District. He is also affiliated faculty in the Contemporary Center on India, a research body at UC Berkeley. Dr. Paul teaches and researches South Asian, ethnic, and global studies, specializing in environmental justice and humanities, South Asian and Asian-American literatures and cultures, as well as environmental media. He is currently a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow affiliated with West Bengal State University researching the jute community, environmental justice, and globalization for a monograph to be completed in 2023–24. He has published several articles on: jute culture, ecology, and community; digital community and fakes; and biopolitics and seed sovereignty. He has made presentations in numerous conferences in India, the US, and Europe, and has been interviewed by the National Public Radio of Washington, D.C., and New Philosopher of Australia. He plans to premiere his film, Bhatti (The Kiln) in India in 2022. He has a PhD in South and Southeast Asian studies with a designated emphasis on critical theory from UC Berkeley and a PhD in English (American literature) from the University of Calcutta. His first Fulbright experience was as an Indian doctoral researcher in the US, and the second as a Fulbright-Nehru US scholar in India. He loves to travel and meet people.
Jute, Bengal’s “golden fiber”, is rooted in sustainability and well suited to local agroecologies; its cultivation has the potential for carbon sequestration and soil restoration, while jute products are environmentally friendly and compostable. Dr. Paul’s Fulbright-Hays project is exploring the local, cultural, and community aspects of jute’s reinvention as a green commodity in order to understand sustainability practices, climate change, and the challenges of adapting to new technologies. The project is examining the many roles of the jute plant in the oral and written cultural forms of India and South Asia. These self-representations by farmers and workers complement and complicate the scientific-technological narratives of agroecology, diversification, and global jute marketing.