Agrarian Studio Expands with Future of Work Fellowship

Looking for community after the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, Associate Professor Sarah Besky established the Agrarian Studio in the ILR School to foster a collective approach to training anthropology graduate students.

“It’s a mash-up of a creative writing seminar and the labs of natural scientists,” said Besky, who serves as the director of the South Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and is a member of the Anthropology (Arts & Sciences) and Development Studies (Agriculture and Life Sciences) Graduate Fields.

Besky’s Agrarian Studio, which is growing with the help of a Future of Work grant, emphasizes the importance of training that fosters critical thinking and refining ideas through collective engagement.

The studio is propelled by the research of the graduate students Besky works with. Each week, a different student circulates something they’ve written, such as a chapter of their dissertation or a grant proposal, and then receives feedback from their peers and Besky.

“There is a focus on turning critique into a supportive process,” Besky said. “The fact is that everything can change, and everything can be written more effectively. So, it’s important to have a space of care and concern that supports critical inquiry and engagement in other people's work. If it’s done in this spirit, it’s one of the most generous things you can do for another person.”

Now in its third year, the studio is expanding through the work of post-doctoral associate Hadia Akhtar Khan, whose two-year appointment is funded by a Future of Work grant. Khan, who recently completed a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Toronto, studies how transnational families have become upwardly mobile by running convenience stores in Malaysia and accumulating land in rural Pakistan.

In addition to collaborating and running the studio alongside Besky, Khan is organizing the Graduate Conference on Agrarian Studies, Climate Change, and the Future of Work on April 19. The program is led by the students in the Agrarian Studio and will bring together graduate students from across Cornell.

“Agrarian studies is an interdisciplinary scholarly field, so the conference and Ag Studio are a way of bringing others across Cornell into ILR,” Besky said. “I’m really hoping the graduate conference can become an annual event and will eventually morph into something that can include students beyond the Cornell campus in the future.”

Khan is also organizing a larger conference on Agrarian Studies, Climate Change, and the Future of Work, to be held on April 26-27. The event, funded by an ILR International Programs conference grant, will bring scholars across a range of disciplines, including anthropology, architecture, geography, environmental studies, feminist studies, and development studies, to consider how climate change is shaping the experience of labor in agrarian settings.

“This is a great opportunity for me to connect and work with folks who have similar research interests,” Khan said. “With the help of this position, I will also be able to publish some of my doctoral research.”