Manjari Mukherjee is a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow (2026–28). She received her PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from Tufts University. Her research and teaching interests include performance history, Jewish and South Asian diasporic studies, and feminist archival practice.

Her dissertation, Yahudi Ki Ladki (The Daughter of a Jew): Baghdadi Jews on the Indian Stage and Screen from the 1920s to the 1950s, examines Baghdadi (Iraqi) Jewish actresses in early Hindi cinema, tracing how they navigated racial, religious, and gendered identities within colonial and nationalist contexts. Drawing on oral histories, family archives, studio photographs, and film media across India, Israel, and the United States, her work reconstructs histories from the ground up that often elude institutional archives.

Her research has received support from the Center for Humanities at Tufts (CHAT), the Tufts Provost’s Office, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University. The American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) recognized her work with the Po-Hsien Chu International Scholar Award, and she has participated in the Association for Jewish Studies Scholars of Color Fellowship. Dr. Mukherjee’s work appears in Theatre Research International, the Jewish Women’s Archive, and the Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Film.

Dr. Mukherjee currently serves as co-convener of the "Performing in/from the Global South" working group at ASTR. She is an affiliate postdoctoral scholar at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and is a trained Kathak dancer.

Areas of Expertise

• Theatre and performance studies
• Jewish and South Asian diasporic studies
• Baghdadi Jewish History
• Feminist archival practice
• South Asian cinema and theatre
• South Asian dance history 

Education

• PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies, Tufts University
• MPhil in Theatre and Performance Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University 
• MA in Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University 
• BA in English, Presidency College