Nikita Simpson - Tension

Name: Nikita Simpson - Tension
Start: 2026-06-25T18:00:00+10:00
End: 2026-06-25T18:00:00+10:00
Location: Upstairs at Gleebooks

About

6pm for 6:30pm Thursday 25 June

Nikita Simpson will be joined by Sophie Chao, Warwick Anderson and Seye Adimbola for a panel discussion chaired by Michael Edwards

In Tension, Nikita Kaur Simpson examines the effects of rapid development in the Himalayas on the minds and bodies of the Gaddi people who inhabit them through attention to the multifaceted state of distress they call “tension.”

This “tension” takes many forms: Kamzori, or weakness, in the bodies of elderly women; “Future tension” accumulating in the minds of young girls; or Opara, or black magic, afflicting whole families.

Through her long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Simpson follows the ways in which Gaddi people tie this distress to broader structural changes, such as land dispossession and caste, class, tribal and gender inequality, which are growing alongside modernity and prosperity. In doing so, she shows how “tension” acts as an everyday diagnostic of the problems of cultural, economic and environmental change as they shape intimate life.

At once a lived historical account, a cartography of care relations, and a multi-sensory exploration of the intimate experiences of atmosphere and body, Tension puts forth a novel theory of distress, that inequality is often determined by who is made to feel, hold, and absorb distress.

Nikita Simpson is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London and the Co-Director of the Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA). Nikita’s research is focused on the structural and relational dimensions of mental distress, and the ways in which inequality comes to be embodied in the home and the environment. She has conducted ethnographic and policy-oriented research in India, the UK, Southern Africa and Australia, and has held positions at the London School of Economics, South Asian University and the University of Sydney. Nikita’s research has been published in a range of venues including the BMJ Global Health, the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Social Science and Medicine and has been featured in public outlets such as the Guardian, BBC News and TANK Magazine.

Dr. Sophie Chao is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney. Her research investigates ecology, capitalism, health, food, and justice in the Pacific.

Professor Warwick Anderson is the Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance and Ethics in the Discipline of Health and leader of the Politics, Governance and Ethics Theme with the Charles Perkins Centre.

Professor Seye Abimbola teaches in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney. His writing and research explore epistemic practices in health systems and global health.

Dr Michael Edwards joined the University of Sydney as a Lecturer in Anthropology in 2024. An anthropologist of religious life, media ecology, and political change, he received his PhD from the London School of Economics and was a Smuts Research Fellow in South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge.