Nikita Kaur Simpson
Medical anthropologist and author of Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas (Duke UP, 2026), drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork to analyze relational and structural dimensions of mental distress.
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Mar 29, 2026 • 50min
Nikita Kaur Simpson, "Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas" (Duke UP, 2026)
Nikita Kaur Simpson, a medical anthropologist who studied the Gaddi people of the Western Himalayas. She explores the local concept of “tension” and how it links bodily symptoms to rapid social change. Short, vivid stories show gendered, household, and structural dimensions of distress. The conversation traces fieldwork methods, cultural metaphors, and how tension circulates across lives.
Mar 29, 2026 • 50min
Nikita Kaur Simpson, "Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas" (Duke UP, 2026)
Nikita Kaur Simpson, a medical anthropologist at SOAS who studies structural dimensions of mental distress, discusses the Gaddi peoples' concept of “tension.” Short scenes explore how tension shows in bodies and homes, how women disproportionately absorb it, sensory methods for studying it, and how rivalry, land loss, and modern change shape everyday distress.
