Lawrence Cohen's training is in the critical study of medicine and public culture, with a focus on small cities in north India, on the intersectional analysis of old age, caste, religion, disability, and gender, and on queer and trans experiments with a range of political and ethical forms. His recent work has centered on the imposition of biometric identity programs in India linking the redistribution of welfare, the transformation of state surveillance, and the disenfranchisement of religious minorities. His recent work has also shifted increasingly to California, addressing modes of triage and abandonment in the Covid pandemic in the Bay Area entangling anti-blackness in the post-Trump era with the neoliberal refusal of care for dependent elderly.
