Colleagues and friends will gather at the Watson Institute Friday, April 3, to congratulate Bhrigupati Singh, assistant professor of anthropology. Singh has been awarded the 2015 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences for his manuscript <em>Poverty and the Quest for Life: Spiritual and Material Striving in Contemporary Rural India</em>.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Bhrigupati Singh, assistant professor of anthropology, has been awarded the 2015 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences for his manuscript, Poverty and the Quest for Life: Spiritual and Material Striving in Contemporary Rural India.

Singh’s book describes the research he conducted while living for 18 months in the rural tribal area of Shahabad in the state of Rajasthan.

The Publications Committee of the American Institute of Indian Studies, which selected Singh as this year’s prize recipient, praised his manuscript as “an ethnography that is at once both theoretically sophisticated and profoundly intimate.”

The Brown-India Initiative will celebrate the release of Singh’s book with a book adda (an informal group conversation) and art show on Friday, April 3, 2015, at 2 p.m. in the Watson Institute’s Joukowsky Forum, 111 Thayer St. Participants include Brown faculty members Amanda Anderson and Leela Ghandi, and Columbia University’s Sudipta Kaviraj and Michael T. Taussig.

Several of India’s leading contemporary artists have submitted artwork in response to Singh’s book. Their work will be on display in the Watson Institute beginning April 3.