Background
I am a feminist political geographer, committed to studying how hierarchies are created within human societies. Over ten years of working with leading feminist non-profits and community-based organizations in India, I am deeply engaged with questions related to non-discrimination, gender, and social justice. As a practitioner, along with my team members, I anchored gender-justice programs for diverse audiences including lawyers, corporate employees, young students, security personnel, and employees of nonprofits. I have formal training in law, social work, and geography, and, in my current work, critically examine the experiences of cleaning workers in India.
Education
- PhD, Geography, University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2023
- Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies, University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2023
- MA, Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, 2007
- BA, Law, ILS Law College Pune University, 2005
Courses
- GEO 102: World Regional Geography
- GEO 151: Geography and Contemporary Society
- GEO 355: Geography of South Asia
Research
My research spans the disciplines of labor, legal, feminist, and political geographies and draws upon frameworks from Black Studies, Dalit Studies, and Infrastructure Studies. In doing so, it examines how space, political economy, and social structures combine to exacerbate the experience of discrimination for marginalized groups. In my doctoral work, I engaged with these questions through a case study of the Indian Railways, using extensive qualitative methods among cleaning workers in Hyderabad, India. My dissertation chapters have been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies and Annals of the American Association of Geographers.