Shubh Mathur is an independent researcher with expertise on nationalism, minorities, borderlands, counterinsurgency, sovereignty, human rights, comparative federalism, and environmental ethics. She has conducted fieldwork in India and Kashmir, focusing on state and state-supported violence, and in the United States with asylum seekers who are victims of torture and other human rights abuses by state and non-state actors. Her latest research looks at the history of Indian state violence against religious and ethnic minority groups.
She is the author of several books and numerous articles, and has co-edited a volume on Kashmir after 2019. Mathur has served as peer reviewer for manuscripts on nationalism and minorities in South Asia and the Middle East for academic publishers.
Caste discrimination or persecution
Deportees/criminal deportees
Ethnic discrimination or persecution
Forced marriage
Gang-related violence/non-state actors
Gender-based violence/domestic violence
Journalist persecution
Political persecution
Prison conditions
Religious discrimination or persecution
Government/state actor persecution
Risk of retaliation
Sexual abuse/assault
Torture
Tribal discrimination or persecution
State and state-supported violence
Collective punishment
I have previously completed expert reports for UK asylum cases on caste-based violence and honour killings and on religious violence by non-state actors in India. I have also served as translator for immigration attorneys in asylum cases and provided support through community organisations to asylum seekers from Pakistan and India in New York and New Jersey in 2001-2004.
2025 Wars Without a Name. A social history of Indian counterinsurgency. Academica Press.
2024 Edited, with Mirza Saaib Beg Life, Politics and Resistance in Kashmir after 2019. A multidisciplinary understanding of the conflict. Lexington Books. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793655271/Life-Politics-and-Resistance-in-K…
2015 The Human Toll of the Kashmir Conflict: Grief and Courage in a South Asian Borderland Palgrave Macmillan http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-human-toll-of-the-kashmir-confl…
2015a "Parveena Ahangar and the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons" and "Documents" Oxford Islamic Studies Online Regional Spotlight: Kashmir (online digital resource)
2014a Guest editor 'Memory and Hope: new perspectives on the Kashmir conflict' Special Section in Race and Class October 2014 http://rac.sagepub.com/content/56/2.toc
2014b 'Introduction' to the Special Section on Kashmir in Race and Class October 2014 http://rac.sagepub.com/content/56/2/4.abstract
2014c (with the late Sajid Iqbal and Zoheb Hossain) 'Reconciliation and truth in Kashmir: a case study' Race and Class October 2014 http://rac.sagepub.com/content/56/2/51.abstract
2013 'The perfect enemy: maps, laws and sacrifice in the making of borders' Critique of Anthropology December 2013, 33: 4 http://coa.sagepub.com/content/33/4/429.abstract
2013b 'Love is strong as death: the moral voice of the Kashmiri tehreek' in Fahad Shah ed. Of Occupation and Resistance: Writings from Kashmir. Westland/Tranquebar
2012 'Life and death in the borderlands: Indian sovereignty and military impunity' Race and Class July-September 2012 Vol. 54 no. 1: 33-49 http://rac.sagepub.com/content/54/1/33.abstract
2012a '"This Garden Uprooted": Gendered violence, suffering and resistance in Indian-administered Kashmir' Gender, Power, and Military Occupations: Asia Pacific and the Middle East since 1945 Christine de Matos and Rowena Ward eds. Routledge
2008 The Everyday Life of Hindu Nationalism: An Ethnographic Account Three Essays Collective Press, New Delhi
2007 'Srinagar – Muzaffarabad – New York: A Kashmiri family’s exile' in Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home, Displacement and Re-settlement Anjali Gera and Nandi Bhatia eds. Pearson India
2006 'Surviving the dragnet: 'Special interest' detainees in the United States after 9/11' Race and Class 47, 3 January 2006 http://rac.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/47/3/31
2005 'Torture, Empire and Nation' Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 40, no. 10 March 5, 2005 online at http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2005&leaf=03&filename=8367&…