School of Social and Political Science

Background

I am a Chancellor's Fellow in sociology and co-director of the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR). I completed a PhD in sociology from the University of Edinburgh in 2016. My doctoral research was a comparative ethnographic study of women who migrate for marriage, over large and small distances, to become brides in rural north India (Uttar Pradesh) in a context of poverty and inequalities of gender and caste. More recently, my research has focused on ageing within the South Asian diasporas. My postdoctoral research, funded by the British Academy (2019-23), explored the relational lives (within and beyond the family) of older adults (50 + years) of South Asian heritage (Indian Sikhs and Pakistani Muslims) in Scotland (Edinburgh and Glasgow). Subsequently, I worked as a Research Fellow at the Edinburgh University Advanced Care Research Centre (ACRC) on ‘Understanding transitions in Care’, carrying out a small set of interviews with older people from the Black African, Chinese and South Asian communities in Edinburgh.

I have previously worked in the field of gender and development in India. Past research projects include: Gender and Migration: Negotiating Rights, A Women's Movement Perspective; The Political and Social Economy of Care in India; Addressing Adverse Sex-ratio in the Selected Districts of India.

Education

Ph.D. Sociology (University of Edinburgh)

M.Phil. Sociology (University of Delhi)

M.A. Sociology (University of Delhi)

B.A. Sociology (University of Delhi)

Teaching

Doing and Designing Social Research (UG Hons)

Sociology 2B: Researching Social Life (UG)

Intimate Relationships: Course Convenor (UG Hons)

Sociology Postgraduate Research Seminar: Course Co-Convenor (PhD)

Current PhD Students

Atufah Nishat

Nuria Lopez Vazquez

Publications

Book

2021 [2022, Paperback]. Moving for Marriage: Inequalities, Intimacy and Women's Lives in Rural North India. SUNY Press (Albany: New York) book series Genders in the Global South [Shortlisted for the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) Book Prize 2023].  

Edited Book

2024. Gender in South Asia and Beyond. Zubaan: New Delhi (with Hugo Gorringe and Radhika Govinda).

Articles & Book Chapters

2022. Mid- and Later-life Cross-Sex Friendships in Minority Ethnic Contexts: Insights from Scotland. Sociological Research Online. 27 (4): 947–963. https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804221123334.

2020. Covid-19 Public Health Messages and Minority Ethnic Older People in Scotland. Discover Society, (September 11).

2019. 'For how long can your piharwale intervene?' Accessing Natal kin support in rural north India. Modern Asian Studies, 53 (5): 1613-45.

2019. 'Flexible' caste boundaries: Cross-regional marriage as 'mixed' marriage in rural north India. Contemporary South Asia, 27 (2): 214-28.

2018. 'Now it is difficult to Get Married': Contextualising Cross-Regional Marriage and Bachelorhood in a North Indian Village, in Sharada Srinivasan and Shuzhuo Li (eds.). Scarce Women and Surplus Men in China and India: Macro Demographics versus Local Dynamics. Cham: Springer.

Book Reviews

Qureshi, Kaveri. 2019. Chronic Illness in a Pakistani Labour Diaspora. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. In The Sociological Review (October 2020).

Grover, Shalini. 2011. Marriage, Love, Caste and Kinship Support: Lived Experiences of the Urban Poor in India. In Sociology 47 (1) (February 2013).