Ravina Aggarwal graduated from the University of Bombay in India and received her Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University with a minor in Folklore. Her dissertation entitled From Mixed Strains of Barley Grain: Person and Place in a Ladakhi Village Community explored the connection between ritual and political space in the Himalayan district of Ladakh in Northern India where she has done fieldwork over a period of seven years with both Buddhist and Muslim communities. She is revising this dissertation for publication. Her current research is an experimental exploration of women's labor in the marketplace of the rapidly urbanizing capital of Ladakh where she is working with Tibetan refugee traders who sell tourist arts, and studying oral histories of local market women who patronized religious institutions. Her interests include ritual and power, post colonial studies, gender, narrative ethnography and the politics and practice of education.