Tresa Abraham’s primary research interest lies in colonial culture. Her focus has been on the use of wild animals in power negotiations in colonial India. Trained in English literary studies, she approaches the colonial past with a literary lens, weaving together histories of animals, humans, and the empire.
She received her PhD from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay, in 2023. Her doctoral dissertation, titled “Hunted and Exhibited: Wild Animals and Kingship in Mysore,” explored how the Wodeyars, the Maharajas of Mysore, used wild animals to negotiate their kingship and princely identity during the colonial period. Articles from this research have been published in Modern Asian Studies and South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.
Dr. Abraham’s current research at Harvard will be on the cultural history of taxidermy in India.
