Nafis Aziz Hasan

Curriculum Vitae

Nafis Aziz Hasan is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Florida State University and a CASI Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2021-22). His research examines the techno-politics of digital media, material politics of public institutions, and technological policies for governance with a regional focus on India. His Ph.D in sociocultural anthropology from UCLA addressed how profound changes introduced by digital technologies impact the information architecture, institutional knowledge, and ethical commitments of public bureaucracy. To study these changes, he conducted qualitative research of large, long-term digital projects in public bureaucracies, applying theoretical concepts from political anthropology, public policy, science and technology studies, information, media and communication studies. He has also been trained in statistical analysis and natural language processing systems. 

Dr. Hasan's work has received a range of support including grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the American Institute of Indian Studies. He has also done work outside his dissertation on the policies and technologies of social identification and rights based legislation around public services. His work on Aadhaar in Tripura is published in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. Other peer-reviewed work has appeared in Political and Legal Anthropology Review and Economic and Political Weekly. He also has a co-authored book entitled Overload, Creep, Excess: An Internet from India in-production by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. His research is informed by diverse work experiences including at the School of Policy and Governance at Azim Premji University, the Center for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), and data analytics in the Data Science industry. 

Recent Publications:
Hasan, N. A. (2024). “Citizen Labor: Correcting Data and Creating Value in an Indian Land Records Database,” American Ethnologist, 51 (3), 376-387.

Hasan, N. A. (2024). “‘Mutating Records’—Bureaucratic Knowledge in the Realm of Splintering Digitality,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, 57(3), 329-355.