School of Social and Political Science

Background

Laila Rajani is a PhD candidate at School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. She is also a member of Centre of Biomedicine, Self and Society hosted at the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh. She was a visiting fellow at the Health Matters working group at the University of Vienna in 2025. Her research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, examines therapeutic logics of care and moral politics of suicide prevention programmes in Tharparkar district in southern Pakistan.

Drawing on critical global health, anthropology of development, and medical sociology, Laila’s project focusses on how mental health actors—psychiatrists, police officers, lady health workers, public health officials, and private and development sector professionals—engage in 'therapeutic governance’ through navigating between psy-discourses and contextually specific ways of producing surveillance and care. Against the backdrop of ongoing coal extraction, subsequent transforming ecologies and shifting politics in Tharparkar, the research aims to nuance the public understanding around development and health inequities and contribute to growing literature on the subject in South Asia.  

Broadly, Laila is interested in how we understand progress and well-being, and how it shapes our understanding of what makes a good life. Previously, Laila has worked on shifts in family dynamics during coronavirus pandemic in Karachi, Pakistan (UCL), Islamophobia and art industry amongst Pakistani Americans in New York City, USA (Brooklyn Arts Council), and post-conflict rehabilitation in Swat, Pakistan, after the end of counterinsurgency in 2012 (Collective for Social Science Research).  She has also worked as a reporter for Dawn’s Herald magazine, high school teacher in Lima and Karachi, and as a development practitioner at UNESCO and World Bank Islamabad.  

Laila's project is jointly supervised by Dr Kaveri Qureshi(primary), Dr Sumeet Jain, and Professor Martyn Pickersgill.

Recent roles:

• Member, Centre of Biomedicine, Self and Society, Usher Institute
• Visiting Researcher, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna (2025)
• Member of organising team, Medical Anthropology Europe Conference (2025)
• Guest speaker, Medical University of Vienna (2024-25)

Publications:

Rajani, L. (forthcoming). Double Standards. in Patchwork Ethnography: a methodological guide. eds. Gökçe Günel and Chika Watanabe. University of Chicago Press

Rajani, L. (2025). Relating Suicide: A Personal and Critical Perspective. By A. Whitehead, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023. 128 pp. £14.99 (paperback); £45.00 (hardback); £13.49 (e-book). ISBN: 135019218X, 9781350192188. Sociol Health Illn, 47: e70038. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.70038

Qureshi, K., Rajani, L. (2023). Saigol’s Pakistan: A Feminist Reading of the Nationalist Project. Gender-Bi Annual Issue 4. January 2023. LUMS SWGI. Cross-posted on Edinburgh Gender.ed blog.

Presentations:

"Politicising Wounds: From Injured Bodies to Social Suffering in War-Ridden Contexts". plenary roundtable at the Medical Anthropology Europe Conference, Austria, September 2025. 

“Psychiatry in a time of flux: notes from an outpatient psychiatry clinic in Tharparkar, Pakistan". Vienna Anthropology Days (VANDA). Austria, September 2024.

“Evidencing a health crisis: motivations and practices of producing suicide statistics in Tharparkar, Pakistan". South Asia Anthropology Group (SAAG). UCL, London, September 2024.

“Inaccessible: examining the visions and realities of a telepsychiatry clinic in southern Pakistan". European Association of Social Anthropology. Barcelona, Spain. July 2024.

“Against Mental Health: understanding the coexistence of development and distress in Tharparkar, Sindh”. Guest lecture at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, Pakistan. January 2024.

“Understanding the response to suicides in Sindh, Pakistan: a study of mental health ‘experts’”. Guest lecture at the Advances in Public Health, Medical Anthropology, and Health Sciences Symposium, Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Jamshoro, November 2023 (news coverage)

“Understanding the response to suicides in Sindh, Pakistan: a study of mental health ‘experts’”. Speaker at the Global Mental Health Day, University of Edinburgh. June, 2023.