Avni Sejpal is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania working on postcolonial theory and the global Anglophone, Asian diasporic literatures, and the C20-21 novel. Her research focuses on the literary forms and aesthetics of Third World decolonisation, Marxist anticolonialism, and Cold War Asia with particular attention to histories of gender, race, and capital. Other projects include an exploration of the interplay between literary form and ethnographic method and an essay on the relation between novelistic detail and colonial and postcolonial archives of violence.

Between 2021-23 she convened Latitudes, the graduate working group for race, empire, and the study of the Global South. She is also pursuing a graduate certificate in gender and sexuality studies.

Avni has previously worked as an editor in independent and scholarly publishing, nonprofit archives, and digital media. She holds a BA in English from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and an MA in English from Villanova University.