Rohini is a PhD Candidate in the department of history at the University of Toronto. She studies histories of science, technology, and environment, postcolonial and feminist science studies, and histories of empire and capitalism. Rohini also teaches and organizes reading groups.
For her dissertation Rohini is researching the history of the chemical industry and pollution in Elmira, Ontario, on Six Nations of the Grand River territory in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Her study examines synthetic chemical production, uses, disposal, and toxicity in Elmira, focusing on critical episodes connected to the Naugatuck/Uniroyal Company’s facility in this town. She approaches chemical technologies in this place to investigate their implications for land use, the postwar expansion of industrial capitalist agriculture, and militarism and warfare in the Cold War period. Her study examines the imperial, racial, and structural politics of a multi-scalar ecological and health crisis that culminated at the turn of the 21st century and the historical processes of how these become naturalized.