Profile
Aadarsh Gangwar

Aadarsh GANGWAR

PhD researcher in Anthropology and Sociology
Research Affiliate, Gender Centre
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Spoken languages
English, French, Hindi
Areas of expertise
  • Gender and Sexuality Studies
  • Refugee rights
  • Migration
  • Queer theory

PhD Thesis

 

Title: Passing for an “Authentic” Queer? Queer disruptions to truth and credibility assessment within asylum procedures

PhD Supervisor: Aditya Bharadwaj &  Miriam Ticktin

Expected completion Date: 2026

THESIS Description

 

Aadarsh’s doctoral project focuses on credibility assessment practices within Swiss asylum procedures involving queer claimants, an increasingly prevalent yet understudied phenomenon. The “culture of disbelief” within bureaucratic asylum procedures places a disproportionate burden of proof on such claimants, requiring them to convince authorities not only of the persecution they have faced but also of their sexual or gender identity itself, a deeply intimate and often slippery facet of the self. Through an ethnographic exposition of how queer asylum seekers wrestle with this unique predicament both within asylum systems and without (in associative spaces), this project will illuminate how they produce the truth of their identities, the truth-telling conventions they mobilise to do so, and the alternatives they imagine and practice to notions of truth circulating within asylum systems.

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • Sexuality

  • gender

  • Migration

  • Asylum

  • Credibility

  • Truth

 

Fellowships, Grants, and Awards

 

  • Swiss National Science Foundation Doc.CH grant (2022-25)
  • Fondation Hans Wilsdorf scholarship (2019-21)

 

Links

LinkedIn