Students

Abdul Rahman KC

Abdul Rahman KC is a Ph.D scholar in Women’s and Gender Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi. He completed his masters in Women’s Studies from Calicut University, Kerala in 2009 and M.Phil in Gender Studies from University of Hyderabad in 2013. His M.Phil research was on “Home Cinemas” in Kerala in which he examined the representation of gender roles and the construction of an ideal Muslim figure. He had also done an advanced certificate course in Gender Studies from University of Delhi in 2010. His Doctoral research is an attempt to look at Mappila masculinities through a study of cultural materials like religious education, songs and films. It is expected that his early training in religious education would enable him to bring a different perspective to his research because of the peculiarities of these two knowledge traditions. Recently he has presented a paper at Calicut Universty Kerala wherein he explored the themes of desire and separation viz-a-viz gender in Mappila letter songs.
Kamya Choudhary

PhD Candidate in International Development at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh

Experience:

Power and Transformation in Rural India: Understanding the Impacts of Solar-Powered Irrigation Pumping.

My research seeks to analyze the social and political consequences of the wide-scale shift to state-subsidized solar-powered irrigation pumping systems in Rajasthan, India. I focus on debates surrounding access, control, and sustainability to demonstrate how interactions with the technology for farmers are mediated by caste, class and gender axes.

Core Interests: India, Gender and Development, Agriculture, Sustainable Development, Irrigation, Water Resource Management, Solar Energy, Gender and Technology, Men and Masculinities.

Qualifications:

2016 – present: PhD International Development, The University of Edinburgh
2015 – 2016: MSc International Development, The University of Edinburgh
2012 – 2015: BA (Hons.) Political Science, The University of Delhi (Lady Shri Ram College)

Lauren Wilks
PhD Candidate in Sociology, University of Edinburgh

Experience: Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, my PhD research explores the everyday lives and experiences of commuting domestic workers in West Bengal, India. I tutor on sociology and South Asian studies courses, and I am also involved ina student-led journal project and apeer support scheme for masters’ students. My special interests include: domestic labour, care, gender, class, social inequality, migration, mobility, commuting, work and labour, family and personal relationships.

Education:

MSc by Research in Sociology, University of Edinburgh
MA (hons) in History, University of Edinburgh

Published Work:

Book reviewof Samita Sen and Nilanjana Sengupta’s Domestic Days: Women, Work, and Politics in Contemporary Kolkata (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016), Contemporary South Asia, 25 (1): 110-111.
Book reviewof Svati P. Shah’s Street Corner Secrets: Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), Sociology, 50 (4): 825-829.
‘Missionary medicine & the “separatist tradition”: an analysis of the missionary encounter with leprosy in late nineteenth-century India,’Social Scientist, 39 (5-6): 48-66.

I have written about my research interests for various media publications, including Thomson Reuters Foundation, The Huffington Post, The Observer, and The Guardian. See: www.laurenwilks.wordpress.com

Conferences:

2018 (scheduled to present). ‘Contestation and Constraint: Commuting Domestic Workers and their Employers in Contemporary Kolkata.’ Servants’ Pasts: 2nd International Conference, 11-13 April, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.
‘Does an Outsider Ever Become One’s Own?’ Commuting Domestic Workers and Employment Relations in Kolkata.’ Annual Meeting of the South Asia Anthropologists’ Group (SAAG),8 September, University of Edinburgh, UK.
‘Everyday Violence and Resistance in the Personal Lives of Women Engaged in Daily Commuting and Domestic Work in West Bengal, India.’ Modern Matters: Negotiating the Future in Everyday Life in South Asia, 20-22 September, Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET), University of Lund, Sweden.

2017. ‘Gender, Migration, and Domestic Work in West Bengal, India.’ (En)gendering Migration: Narratives from South Asia and Beyond, 20 February, Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK), India.

Lisa Kalayji
PhD Student in Sociology, University of Edinburgh

Experience: My doctoral research is situated in the sociology of emotions, and explores emotion cultures in social movements through a case study of British radical feminist magazine Trouble and Strife. I specialise in documentary research methods, particularly involving archival documents of life. I teach feminist debates and the sociology of emotions.

Special interests: Sociology of emotions, feminist historiography, culture

Education: MSc Social Research; BA Philosophy

Select Conferences:

‘The Anti-emotional Conjuncture in 1980s British Radical Feminism’, at British Sociological Association Emotions Study Group Conference, Salford, September 2017
‘Reading Emotion from Textual Data: A Sociological Approach’, at European Sociological Association Annual Conference, Athens, August 2017
‘The Textual is Political: Exploring Radical Feminist Emotion Culture through Book Reviews’, at British Sociological Association Annual Conference, Manchester, April 2017

Megan Canning
PhD Candidate (International Development)

Experience:
Before returning to academia to pursue my PhD in 2014, I previously spent eight years working in the NGO sector both in the UK and in Africa. I worked as project manager for a development NGO in Malawi, splitting my time between Malawi and Scotland for more than six years, working on rural development projects in the areas of health, education and the environment. I’ve also worked on research in development related to entrepreneurship and economic empowerment. My academic research has focused on agribusiness in Africa, including ethnographic research analysing the gender dynamics of Malawi’s sugar industry in 2014; and 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork on a commercial sugar estate in Malawi between 2016/2017.

Special interests:
I’m interested in the political economy and anthropology of development in the Global South; with a special focus on the gender dynamics of development. I use gender- and intersectionality- as an organising category through which to explore the power dynamics of labour, livelihoods, and production in southern Africa. My work is interdisciplinary, but crosscuts the fields of development studies, African studies, anthropology, and feminist economics. My current PhD work is an ethnography of sugar production in Malawi, using an intersectional lens to explore the social and economic dynamics of agroindustrial development in Malawi.

Education:

2014-present: PhD in International Development, University of Edinburgh
2012-2014: MSc in International Development, University of Edinburgh
2002-2006: MA Hons in Philosophy and English Literature, University of Glasgow

Published work:
Canning, M. (2017) ‘Sugar and Gender Relations in Malawi’, in Shortall, S. and Bock, B. (eds), Gender and Rural Globalisation: International Perspectives on Gender and Rural Development, Wallingford: CAB International Publishing.

Conferences:

Canning, M. (2017) ‘Life Inside the Bubble: the Sugar Estate as a Social Space’. Presented at the Centre of African Studies annual presentation day for PhD candidates in African Studies and International Development. University of Edinburgh. April 2017.
Canning, M. (2015) ‘Wage Labour and Livelihood Strategies in Malawi’s Plantation Economy’. Presented at the Business, Investment, Trade and Tourism (BITT) Forum, Scotland Malawi Partnership, Edinburgh. June 2015.
Canning, M. (2015) ‘Labour, Livelihoods and Gender Equality in the Malawian Sugar Industry’. Presented at the 16th Annual Researching Africa Day, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. March 2015.

Other projects:
I am currently involved in teaching at the University of Edinburgh- including tutoring for undergraduate study in sustainable development, and international development, aid, and humanitarianism- as well as guest lecturing on the topic of agriculture and the rural economy in Africa.

Nancy Yadav

Nancy is PhD research student at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University, and Delhi. She has a background in English Literature with her B.A (Hons) and Masters in English Literature (2008-2013) from The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU). She completed her M.phil in English Literature from Department of English University of Delhi (2013-2015). Her M.phil dissertation was “Dimensions of Ethnographic and Historiographic Fiction: An Analysis of select works of Pratibha Ray and Mahasweta Devi.” Her research interest is in the field of literature and its interdisciplinary approaches in the field of Anthropology and Social sciences.Her PhD research topic is to understand and analyse identity and representation of indigenous women under Particularly Vulnerable Tribal group in ethnography and fiction. The theoretical undercurrent of her research lies in interdisciplinary approach and blurring of disciplinary boundaries between social sciences and literary studies to understand indigenous women’s issues.

Nibedita Hazarika

Nibedita is currently enrolled as PhD student under School of Development Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi. Her supervisor is Prof. & Dean Dr. Sumangala Damodaran. She completed her M.A. in Globalization and Labour Studies from School of Management and Social Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (2008-10) and Global Labour University ( GLU). Her dissertation topic was “The issue of Social Security among Domestic Workers: A case study Anand Vihar and New Ashok Nagar areas of Delhi”. Thesis Supervisor was Prof. Sharith K. Bhowmick, Dean and Professor School of Management and Labour Studies, TISS. Nibedita has done her BA (Hons.) in History from Ramjas College, University of Delhi. (2005-08). She received Certificate of Merit in 2006-07.

Órla Meadhbh Murray
PhD Student & Tutor – Sociology, University of Edinburgh

My research uses the work of feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith to explore the organisation of UK higher education through texts, specifically student satisfaction surveys, research funding guidelines, and the Research Excellent Framework, which assesses the quality of academic research. I also teach extensively in sociology and human geography, with a focus on qualitative research and feminism. My special interests include: institutional ethnography; intersectionality; identity; feminist epistemology; activism; theatre and performance.

Selected Publications:

Selected Conferences Presentations:

2017

‘Feel the Fear and Killjoy Anyway: Being a Challenging Feminist Presence in Precarious Academia’ – Educational Futures and Fractures, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow – 24th February.

2016

2015

Sarah Golightly
PhD Candidate in Social Work, University of Edinburgh

Experience: As a PhD student, I am currently researching therapeutic boarding schools in the USA, focusing on the narratives of former students. My background is in social work practice in the UK, where I have specialised in supporting LGBT+ victims/survivors of domestic abuse, and LGBT+ young people experiencing homelessness.

Special interests: Mad Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Queer Theory, Feminist Research Methods, Anti-Oppressive Practice

Education: MScR Social Work (University of Edinburgh), MA Social Work (University of Sussex), BA Sociology (McGill University)

Published work:

Golightley, S. (2016) ‘Disabling Madness: Disrupting the mind-body divide‘, Asylum Magazine: The Magazine for a Democratic Psychiatry, Special Issue: Mad Studies Comes of Age (Part 1), 23(4), PCCS Books.
Tosh, J. and Golightley, S. (2016) ‘The Caring Professions, Not So Caring?: An Analysis of Bullying and Emotional Distress in the Academy‘, in Burstow, B. (eds.) Psychiatry Interrogated: An Institutional Ethnography. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 143-160.
Select Conferences:
‘Disabling Madness: Disrupting Mind Body Dichotomies’,
2016 Disability Studies Conference, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
‘Transgender People’s Access to Domestic Violence Shelters’
2014 Trans*Literate Conference, Hunter College, New York City, USA

Shailly Shailly

Ms. Shailly is working as Assistant Professor (Social Science) in the Department of Elementary Education. She has done her M.Phil (Education) from Ch. Devi Lal University, Sirsa, Haryana. She did her Masters in Sociology and Post Graduate Diploma in Women and Gender Studies (PGDWGS) from Indira Gandhi National Open University Delhi and Masters in Education, from Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi. She is pursuing Ph.D in Women and Gender Studies from Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). She teaches courses related to Sociology and is involved in various other related practicums, supervision of students’ school internship and undergraduate research projects. She has been teaching in the Education Program for over ten years. Her area of specialization is Sociology and Gender Studies. She is an active member of NSS, Equal Opportunity Cell and street play society, Kshitij of Gargi College.

Syeda Naghma Abidi

Nagh Syeda Naghma Abidi ma has a background in Psychology with her Masters in Clinical Psychology from University of Delhi and Applied Developmental Psychology from University of Pittsburgh. Diverse experience with young adults both in India and US along with strong research background has equipped her with interdisciplinary skills that have benefited her conduct workshops and training sessions with young people and adult professionals as well.