Mahmudul H Sumon Professor, Department of Anthropology
PROFILE
SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Mahmudul H Sumon is Professor of Anthropology and a social anthropologist whose research explores how people construct their social and cultural worlds and identities. His work has particularly focused on communities in Bangladesh historically categorized in colonial laws, policies, and scholarship as “tribes” or “aboriginals.” He critically investigates the politics of knowledge in the making of “adivasis” and how these dynamics unfold within contemporary transnational fields of power, knowledge, and articulations of indigeneity.
After studying anthropology at Jahangirnagar University, he joined the newly established Department of Anthropology at Rajshahi University as a lecturer, before returning to his alma mater in 2002. His primary ethnographic research, beginning in 2002–03, examined groups, platforms, and networks of people organized under the name “Adivasi.” This fieldwork—conducted in northwestern Bangladesh, the Madhupur forest area, and Nadda Kalachandpur in Dhaka—formed the basis of his doctoral degree at the University of Kent (2014).
Beyond indigeneity, Sumon has researched Bangladesh’s garments sector, focusing on its politics of governance. He co-edited Ādibāsī āche? …āche! (Saṃbed: Dhaka, 2014) and Jarip theke bayān (Saṃbed: Dhaka, 2014). His most recent book, Ethnicity and Adivasi Politics in Bangladesh (Routledge, 2022), continues this line of inquiry.
For his doctoral studies, he received the Overseas Research Scholarship Awards Scheme. His collaborative projects include research with colleagues at the University of Sussex on compensation politics following the 2013 Rana Plaza building collapse, and work with icddr,b on working-class women’s preparedness during the COVID-19 pandemic in Dhaka and Gazipur. He has also received multiple research grants from Bangladesh’s University Grants Commission. His current study examines the changing landscape of technology use among Dhaka’s working-class communities.
At Jahangirnagar University, Dr. Sumon teaches courses on Anthropological Theory and Advanced Methodology (MPhil/PhD level), South Asian Histories, Cultures and Societies, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Identity, Visual Media and Cultural Change, and Other Cultures. He is a member of the Development Studies Association and has participated in several conferences of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK.
Also, see:
https://juniv.academia.edu/MahmudulSumon
RESEARCH INTEREST
Ethnic politics, feminism, transnationalism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonial, neoliberal development, visual culture and politics, visual anthropology, experimental ethnography, etc.
JOURNAL PAPER
Social Protection as Technocratic Fix?: Labour Precarity and Crises of Capitalism after Bangladesh's Rana Plaza Collapse, Journal of Labor and Society, 2023.What do we learn from hybrid governance in Bangladesh’s garments sector?, FocaalBlog, 2022.
An anonymous visit to a garment factory in Bangladesh, FocaalBlog, 217.
Everyday violence of female garments workers in Bangladesh, The Jahangirnagar Review: Part II Social Sciences, 2019.
Multi-sectoral Initiative: A critical overview of the Accord in Bangladesh, The Jahangirnagar University Journal of Business Research, 2020.
“SāmpradāẏikꞋtā niẏe ekꞋṭi manolog”, Nṛbijñān Patrikā, 16, pp.107-116, 2011.
“Why refer to the Hindus in Bangladesh as “minority”?”, Politeja. The Journal of the Faculty of International and Political Studies, 40, 1, pp.341-348, 2016.
“‘Feeling of loss’: Ethnicity, ethnographic imagination and identity work of Mandi/ Garo youth in Dhaka”, Nṛbijñān Patrikā, 22, pp.59-79, 2017.
“Upanibeś, ethanikꞋsattā ebaṃ pratirodh: prekśita bāṃlādeś”, Nṛbijñān Patrikā, 23, pp.1-10,
CONFERENCE PAPER
My changing relation to qualitative evaluation and its many tools: what I see and how I see it now?, DSA 2025 conference, University of Bath, UK (Online participation)., 2025.What university we wish to have: Neoliberal transformation of Bangladesh’s public universities, London, UK, 2023.
BOOK
Ethnicity and adivasi politics in Bangladesh. Routledge., 2022. doi: 10.4324/b23270Ādibāsī āche? …āche! Ādibāsī nām bitarker prabandha saṃkalan. Saṃbed: Ḍhākā., 2014.
Jarip theke bayān: Bāṃlādeś rāṣṭrer uttar-paścimāṅcaler prāntik jātisattār mānuṣer bhūmi samasyākendrik samīkṣā o baẏān. Saṃbed: Ḍhākā, 2014.
BOOK CHAPTER
"Informal" Labour in COVID-19: An Annotated Diary Entry from Dhaka, 2023.Rereading Palamau: Bengali self and the “primitive within” in the Time of Colony. Dhaka: Novel Publishing House., pp.109-118, 2015.
Ethnicity, Ethnographic Imagination, and Identity Construction of Mandi Youth in Dhaka. Dhaka: UPL 2022., 2022.
“Discourses of compensation and the normalization of negligence: The experience of the Tazreen factory fire”. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2017, pp.147-172, 2017.
OTHER
Politics of recognition of ‘adivasis’ in Bangladesh, 2024.All the ‘skill talk’ in university education, The Daily Star, 2024.
Call for justice beyond compensation, New Age, 2021.
Activity
Position: Professor
Period: 2018-
Contact
Mahmudul H Sumon
Professor
Department of Anthropology
Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka-1342, Bangladesh.
Cell Phone: +8801727521602
Email: sumonmahmud@juniv.edu
, sumonmahmud@hotmail.com
