Simiran lalvani

Hello, I am a qualitative, ethnographic researcher ​interested in questions of technology, work, and ​culture.


Currently, I am a DPhil student and Felix scholar at ​the Univertsity of Oxford. In my doctoral research, ​I examine two questions. (1) How do food delivery ​platforms use branding to aggregate users onto their ​interfaces? (2)What are the experiences and ​interactions of platform users buying and selling ​food?


Prior to the this, I have worked as a freelance ​researcher with the MIT Digital Currencies ​Initiative, Microsoft Research, Centre for Internet ​and Society, and BBC Media Action and at a ​qualitative market research firm. I have also built ​and taught undergraduate courses in Sociology and ​Anthropology for students of design.


You can reach me at simiran.lalvani@gmail.com

Academic

Publications

Book chapters

Journals

Performing Gender, Doing Politics: Social Media and Women Election Workers in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Proceedings of the 2020 Internation Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development ICTD.

Semi-academic

What happens in a platform office? Futures of Work, Bristol University Press.


Viral Care: Spectacles of Care as a Substitute for Workers’ Rights. Solidarity and Care blog by The Sociological Review.


The Personal and Social Risks That India's Food Delivery Workers Are Taking During COVID-19. Digital news publication The Wire.


Workers’ fictive kinship relations in Mumbai app-based food delivery. CASTAC blog, American Anthropological Association.




Reports

CBDC: Expanding financial inclusion or deepening the divide? MIT Digital Currencies Inititative and Maiden Labs.


Studying Platform Work in Mumbai and New Delhi, Centre for Internet and Society.

Multimedia

Publications

YouTube

Click on the icon alongside to hear a Hinglish version of my essay on gig workers fictive kinship ties thatenable platform work.


For the CASTAC blog, American Anthropological Association.



Listen to an experimental audio about gig work in Mumbai and Delhi titled ‘Audioscapes of the Platform Economy.'


Built with Anushree Gupta and Sarah Zia as part of the Studying Platform Work project hosted at Anthropology News.

Led by the Hindi soap opera actor alongside, hear a panel discussion about platformization of work inside and outside the household.


4 researchers place their inquiries between echoes of television soap operas, new order sirens heard by platform workers and vernacular music cultures that travel to and emerge from digital platforms.


Hosted at the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) annual conference.

Objects

A small gallery of common objects that I've re-made.

With a bag tailor in Bombay, I turned a nylon thaili, a popular fixture in markets, into a backpack.

Petis are commonly used for household storage and as a cashiers drawer. I painted a peti and stuck keys with no locks and use it as a small bag.

Re-made saree blouse fabric into double pleated trousers with a local men’s tailor (women’s tailors refused to stitch this style!)