I am an oral historian and an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of labour, urban and media studies.

Currently, I hold an 18-month postdoctoral fellowship under the transnational Deindustrialization and Politics of Our Time (DePOT) project funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). My research investigates the gendered nature of spatial division of labour in the post-1960s global economy with a particular emphasis on women's labour in South Asia. I have been awarded the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (36 months) at the University of Glasgow for a project titled "Not Cheap Labour: Women’s Lives in Garment Supply Chains".

In 2002, I completed a BA (Hons) degree in Engllish Literature from Miranda House College for Women, University of Delhi. I also hold an MA in English from the English and Foreign Languages University in India and ten years of work experience in the fields of print journalism and oral history research in India. 

After a career in journalism between 2005-2013, which taught me some precious lessons in field work and politics of representation, I worked as an oral history curator at the Centre for Public History, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, in Bengaluru from 2013 until 2015. This hands-on training in the field of oral history brought me back to academic research and a doctoral degree in Canada.

I completed a PhD in the interdisciplinary Individualized Program at Concordia University, Montreal, in 2022. In 2022-23, I worked as the Coordinator and Community Facilitator at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University where I facilitated university-community dialogues and supported a community of oral historians in their research and collaboration initiatives. I am also a core affiliate of this world-renowned research centre in oral history and have served on its administrative board.

Languages: English, Hindi, Bengali and intermediate-level French

Trained as an oral historian in India and Canada, my research addresses questions of socio-economic inequalities, dynamics of power in place and questions of labour and gender in the Global South, including geographies of poverty and informality within the Global North.

Current Research Project:

My current research examines the impact of economic restructuring on labour’s experiences through the Global South lens. It aims to transnationalize the conversation around deindustrialization, while also exploring the entanglement of economy and culture through a focus on women’s labour.

Not Cheap Labour: Women's Lives in Garment Supply Chains, funded by Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, will engage with the lives, struggles and history of women termed “cheap labour” in the global supply chain of garment production. Women from low-income households form the backbone of the traditional chikan embroidery industry in Lucknow, India. The project aims to foreground their experiences to examine the power and politics inscribed in the production network of an industry that has both local and international markets.

Related Publications:

Chatterjee, P. Garment workers through the lens of loss: the long shadow of deindustrialization in South Asian films. In: Strangleman, T., Berger, S., Clarke, J., High, S., Linkon, S. and Nettleingham, D. (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Deindustrialization Studies. Routledge. (Accepted for Publication)

Related Public Engagement:

Screening of Discount Workers by Ammar Aziz and Christopher Patz and Roundtable on “Transnational Production, National Laws” in collaboration with Glasgow Labour, Employment and Work (GLEW) Group and ArtsLab, University of Glasgow. Roundtable participants: Raktim Ray (UCL); Christopher Patz (co-director, Discount Workers); David Featherstone (University of Glasgow) and Piyusha Chatterjee (University of Glasgow); moderated by Jackie Clarke (University of Glasgow). March 15, 2024; Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) Glasgow. Organisers: Piyusha Chatterjee, Diarmaid Kelliher and David Featherstone

Past Projects:

Buskers in the City uses an open-source software called Atlascine, developed by Geomedia Lab at Concordia University. This navigable map is animated by life histories of buskers in Montreal. The project creates a publicly accessible database of stories that will reveal patterns and politics of movement and mobility among buskers. A version of the project can be seen here.

My doctoral thesis, ‘We have always been here’: Busking, urban space and economy of Montreal, was an oral hstory project that examined the place of buskers in the political economy of Montreal and engages with their life histories in relationship to the city. The interviews are now part of a local oral history archive.

Related Publications:

“Street performers in Montréal are being displaced and excluded.” The Conversation, 14 August 2022, and “Organizing to Stay Legal: Montreal Metro Musicians’ Journey from Illegality to Self-Policing.” Quebec Heritage News 13, no.4, Fall 2019.

Related Public Engagement:

with Fred Burrill, Kelann Currie-Williams, Laurence Hamel-Roy, Lauren Laframboise, Eliot Perrin (equal contribution by all). "Who gets left behind or left out? Stories of displacement and struggle in Montreal." Oral history-based collaborative video project on urban futures. 2019. Montreal2050 Fellowship.

Other Past Publications (select):

Piyusha Chatterjee and Steven High. “The Deindustrialisation of Our Senses: Residual and Dominant Soundscapes in Montreal’s Point Saint-Charles District.” In Telling Environmental
Histories: Intersections of Memory, Narrative and Environment, edited by Katie Holmes and Heather Goodall. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 179–209.

Piyusha Chatterjee, “The Urban Pirate: Rethinking the piratical as a “worlding” practice in the Global South,” Antropologia Urbană 11, 2018. 15–26.

Piyusha Chatterjee, The Globally Familiar: Digital Hip Hop, Masculinity, and Urban Space in Delhi by Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan for The Canadian Geographer/ Le Géographe Canadien 67, No. 3, Fall 2023. 25–26. (Book review)

List by: Type | Date

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, 2024-2027. Not Cheap Labour: Women’s Lives in Garment Supply Chains.

Fonds de recherche du Québec - société et culture, bourse de doctorat, 2018-2020. C$42,000 and C$14,000 (2-term extension due to Covid-19).

I welcome enquiries from students interested in working with oral history methodology and/or developing community-based and public history research projects.

Projects in the following areas are of particular interest to me: deindustrialization and economic restructuring in the Global South; gender and labour; contemporary history of India; media cultures in South Asia; South Asian diaspora history; and informality in Global North/South.

Academic Year 2024-25 (Semester II)

SMLC MLitt / Global Narratives of Crisis: Oral narratives of deindustrialization and crisis in working-class communities

SMLC CompLitt1002 / Level 1/ Heroes (Heroic Women): Norma Rae and the real-life story of an union organiser from North Carolina

Selected international presentations

• 2024: International Conference on Urban Affairs (New York City)
• 2024: Deindustrialization and Politics of Our Time Annual Summer Institute and Conference (Glasgow)
• 2023: Deindustrialization and Politics of Our Time Annual Summer Institute and Conference (Sydney, Nova Scotia)
• 2023: American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (Denver/Online)
• 2022: Deindustrialization and Politics of Our Time Annual Summer Institute and Conference (Ruhr)
• 2022: Feminist Geography Conference, (Online)
• 2022: Canadian Committee for Labour History (Calgary)
• 2022: 9th Emerging Scholars Symposium in Oral History, Digital Storytelling and Research Creation (Montreal)
• 2021: COHDS-SOHC Biannual Summer Institute (Online)
• 2021: American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (Seattle/Online)
• 2020: Symposium, Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire et interdisciplinaire sur l’emplois, pauvreté et la protection sociale, UdeM (Online)
• 2020: 7th Emerging Scholars Symposium in Oral History, Digital Storytelling and Research Creation (Montreal)
• 2019: 32e Entretiens Jacques Cartier 2019 : Le rendez-vous France x Québec (Montreal)
• 2018: Oral History Association Conference (Montreal)
• 2018: Annual Conference of OHS and OHNI (Belfast)
• 2016: XIX International Oral History Association Conference (Bengaluru)
• 2014: XVIII International Oral History Association Conference (Barcelona)

Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (Concordia University) Administrative Board, Student Representative, 2017-18.

Oral History Association of India, Joint Secretary, 2013-14.