Upasana Bhattacharjee
Upasana Bhattacharjee is a PhD student at the Faculty of Information and Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. Their dissertation explores mobility, labour, and gender. They are a member of the Board of Directors of TTCRiders, a Toronto-based transit advocacy organisation. Previously, Upasana was a fellow at the Global Centre of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability at Technische Universität Berlin. They have also worked in the civic and open technology ecosystem in India.
Supervisor
Sarah Sharma
Research
Upasana's dissertation examines how gender and masculinities are performed and learned in relation to labour and mobility in Toronto. They conduct multi-sited ethnographic research in Toronto (participant observation and semi-structured interviews) with (a) South Asian gig workers who use bikes for food delivery and (b) do-it-yourself (DIY) volunteers/workers at bicycle/bike repair sessions for women, trans, and non-binary groups. Their dissertation explores how transitioning genders and migrant masculinities are performed in sites often overlooked within Queer and Trans theory, and in particular sites that coalesce around labour and mobility. Through a focus on migrant masculinity and community spaces for gender nonconforming people, they examine culturally specific and spatially grounded processes of learning, rehearsals, and transitions/migrations involved in the production of gender.