Associate Professor Malini Sur
Director - Higher Degree Research and Teaching
Malini Sur is an anthropologist and a documentary film maker. Her research and teaching relate to global and local challenges facing transnational migration and mobility. Trained in comparative, historical, and visual methods, A/P Sur is noted for her contributions within and beyond academia. Her research has been funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), Dutch Research Council (NWO), Ministry of Education Singapore and awards from the Tata Trusts. A/P Sur is currently Director - Higher Degree Research (Graduate Studies) and Teaching at the Institute for Culture and Society and has served as the President of Australian Anthropological Society (2023).
A/P Sur’s book Jungle Passports: Fences, Mobility, and Citizenship at the Northeast India-Bangladesh Border (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) was awarded the President’s Book Prize from the South Asian Studies Association of Australia, Bernard S. Cohen Prize (honourable mention) and Choice Outstanding Academic Title (2022). She has published in Cultural Anthropology, Comparative Studies in Society and History and Modern Asian Studies. Her work features in Public Books New York, New Books Network, Conversations in Anthropology and The Polis Project. A/P Sur has also commented widely in the media including the ABC.
A/P Sur is currently leading three research projects that build on and extend her decade long work on transnational migration. These address three interconnected lines of enquiry—border-making, gendered identities, and cultural diversity. The first explores the lives and livelihoods of Indian migrant women nurses in regional New South Wales and Northern Territory, Australia. For the second, funded by an ARC LP “Collaborative Museums,” A/P Sur leads a research strand on the social life along the Parramatta/Burramatta River in Australia working with curators, artists, scientists, policy makers and local and transnational communities. She is currently completing a documentary film on the Parramatta/Burramatta River. Finally, she is the lead investigator in a HASS-STEM project on rice-eating, metabolism and migrant cultures bringing together regenerative biologists, cereal scientists, scholars of medicine and health and anthropologists to study cultural exchanges across the borders of Australia and the Asia Pacific.
A/P Sur teaches courses on the anthropology of globalization, power and cultural change, everyday life and social theory at the School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University. She has worked and held fellowships at the Australian National University, University of Amsterdam, University of Toronto, National University of Singapore, and the Social Science Research Council (New York). A/P Sur is an Associate Editor of South Asia – Journal of South Asian Studies and serves on the editorial boards of the Australian Journal of Anthropology, Commoning Ethnography and Humanities Research. She has served on the Executive Committee of the South Asian Studies Association of Australia (2017-2020) and was ICS’ Deputy Director of Engagement and International (2021-2022). Her first documentary film Life Cycle has been screened at Perth, Sydney, Canberra, Baltimore, Santiago, Singapore, Kolkata, and New York and her photographs have been exhibited in Amsterdam, Berlin, Bonn, Chiang Mai, Gottingen, Heidelberg, Kathmandu, and Munich.
A/P Sur is currently not accepting any doctoral scholars for supervision.
Prospective students are requested to write to her in September 2025.
Qualifications
- PhD, 2012, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Research Focus
- Transnational Migration
- Mobility
- Gender
- Diversity
- Climate
Selected Publications
Sur, M 2021. “Jungle Passports: Fences, Mobility, and Citizenship at the Northeast India-Bangladesh Border” (University of Pennsylvania Press).
Sur, M 2020. “Time at its Margins: Cattle Smuggling at the India-Bangladesh Border,” Cultural Anthropology, Volume 35, No 4, pp 546–574.
Sur, M, & Meetren, MV 2020. “Territorial Ironies: Deservingness as a Struggle for Migrant Legitimacy in Belgium,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol 33, pp. 575-589 (with Masja van Meetren).
Sur, M 2020. “Sounds of Trauma,” Commoning Ethnography, Vol 3, No 1, pp144 -151.
Sur, M 2019. “Danger and Difference: Tea-time at the Northeast India-Bangladesh border,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol 53, No 3, pp 846-873.
Sur, M 2019. " Dreaming borders," Somatosphere.
Sur, M, & Meetren, MV 2018. “Borders of Integration: Paperwork between Bangladesh and Belgium” In Borders and Mobility in South Asia and Beyond, edited by Reece Jones and Azmhery Ferdous, pp. 207-228. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Sur, M 2016. “Battles for the Golden Grain: Paddy Soldiers and the Making of the Northeast India–East Pakistan Border.” Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol 58, No 3, pp 804-832.
Sur, M 2012. “Through Metal Fences: Material Mobility and the Politics of Transnationality at Borders.” Mobilities Vol 8, No 1, pp 70–89.
Sur, M & Kalir, B 2012. Transnational Flows and Permissive Polities: Ethnographies of Human Mobility in Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Access All Publications
- malinisur.com (opens in a new window)
- Western Sydney Staff Profile (opens in a new window)
- Academia.edu.au Profile (opens in a new window)
- Google Scholar Profile (opens in a new window)
Selected Awards and Recognitions
- Australian Research Council Linkage Grant “The Collaborative Museum: Embedding Cultural Infrastructure in the City.” 2021-2024.
- Researcher of the Year Award 2023, School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University.
- Western Sydney University’s Researcher Development Award 2022.
- Singapore Ministry of Education (Tier 1) and National University of Singapore joint grants.
- International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) Fellowship.
- Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
- Chevening Scholar, University of Essex.
- J.N. Tata Trust Award.
- Prof. Aisha Harris Memorial Shield and Award for Best Student, Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
- Prof. Grace Mathew Award for the Best Student in Fieldwork, Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
- J.R.D. Tata Trust Award.
