TransAbundance: Unruly Transnational Practices
On October 29, 2025, CSGS and the Gender Studies Program, University of Melbourne, convened a landmark symposium at the Melbourne Global Centre, Delhi, exploring trans* identities, practices, and activism beyond dominant Western frameworks.
As the culminating event of the TAARIF 2025 Fellowship, funded by the Antipode Foundation, the symposium brought together scholars, activists, and artists to examine non-Anglophone genealogies of gender, creative methodologies, and the lived realities of gender non-conforming communities across South Asia.
Head Organizers: Dr. Arunima Theraja and Dr. CQ Quinan
| Panel 1: Trans* Digital Modalities | Chair: CQ Quinan, University of Melbourne | |
|---|---|
| Sid/Pyre (Siddhant Shukla) | “Kabhi Kabhi Aditi”: Trans*Catfish-ing, A Story Of Deception, Intimacy And Becoming |
| Colonial Legacies of Biometric Project | “SMILE,” You're On Camera!: On the Surveillance of Transgender Life in India |
| Udhriti Sarkar | Reel Messy: Navigating Excess on Instagram as a Trans* Researcher |
| Panel 2: Andhaa Kanoon (The Law is Blind): Exploring Trans*Abundant Policymaking and Medico-Legal Systems | Chair: Ananya Dasgupta, Ashoka University | |
|---|---|
| Seth McKellar | Imagining Bodies Beyond State Logics: A Critique of Transsexual Legal Reform (1988–2004) |
| Shalwin Yoosuf | Trans Praxis and Epistemology for Abolition: Unmaking Indian Prisons |
| Disha Sharma | Policing, Misrecognition, and Agency: The Spatial Politics of Queerness and Sexual Citizenship in Indian Higher Education |
| Panel 3: Unruly Trans* Cartographies: Space, Place and Homemaking | Chair: Dhiren Borisa, O.P. Jindal University | |
|---|---|
| Astik | Ghosted in Villages, Policed in Cities: Trans Geographies of Visibility and Erasure |
| Dipannita Saha | Building with Fragments: Trans Homemaking as Unruly Praxis and Spatial Abundance in Delhi |
| Ansh (Qabeer) Sharma | “Zyada feminine ban kar cruising spot par naa jaayein”: Some notes on embodied Trans*Queer Reflexivity |
| Panel 4: Spill the T: A Trans*Media Disruption | Panel Host: Arundhati Rahraman, Ashoka University | |
|---|---|
| Abigail Silversmith Irfan | I keep sitting in madhouses yearning for a transsexual witchspell |
| Kevin Mutta | Wide with Wonder |
| Gautham Warrier (Gaw) | I mis(s)read the film I Saw the TV Glow: On the trans*-queer crip practices of surviving cis-ableism |
| Cyrus Khumukcham | Parody Dell'arte: From playing homo stock characters to a media movement |
| Nik | Chrysalis : A TransFormative Aural Experiment |
| Panel 5: Whose line is it anyway? Trans* Life Writing | Chair: Arunima Theraja, Ashoka University | |
|---|---|
| Claude Kempen | Reading Memoir Toward Nonbinary Politics: First Conclusions from a PhD Project |
| Ishita Das | Transmasculine Homosexual Life-Writing: A Transfuturistic Redrawing of Transgender Men Lives |
| Panel 6: Affirmative Embodiments and Ecologies of Care | Chair: Prerna Subramaniam, O.P Jindal University | |
|---|---|
| Rana | Who Is the Pregnant Person? Refusal, Care, and a Trans* Lens on Reproduction in India |
| Transmen Collective | Invisible in the Storm: Climate Change and the Lived Realities of Transmasculine People in India |
| Aditya Vikram Shrivastava | Whither Kothi: How Kothi-ness (Dis)locates Transgender Politics in India |
| Simran Tapaswi | Reorienting Dysphoria: A Trans Phenomenology of Indian Trans and Non-binary Experiences of Gender Dy/sphoria and Dis/orientation |