Anamika Priyadarshini

Anamika Priyadarshini joined the Department of Global Gender Studies of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo with as a PhD student in 2006. She had joined the department with about six years’ experience of working with women in Bihar, a masters in International Development from Cornell University and a BA in Economics Honours from Patna University. In her doctoral dissertation, she made an attempt to retrieve the history of nineteenth century Bihar’s women home-based workers. Professor Gwynn Thomas was the Chair of her Doctoral Committee. Her other mentors were: Professor Keith Griffler, Professor Carine Mardorossian and Professor Ramya Sreenivasan. She received Margaret McNamara Fellowship right after completion of her PhD course work at GGS in 2008 and returned to India for conducting research for her doctoral dissertation.

She had taught undergraduate courses of GGS at UB and, after returning India, she taught masters courses at the Centre for Development Studies, Central University of South Bihar for about two years. She also headed a project that intended to analyse the impact of Bihar Government’s much celebrated project Jeevika, which primarily aimed at promoting livelihood options among women in rural Bihar. Later she joined India’s well known academic institution CSD (Council for Social Development), Delhi. Anamika defended her doctoral dissertation and obtained her degree while working at CSD where she directed three research projects, two supported by ICSSR (Indian Council for Social Science Research) and third by the Government of Karnataka. These projects aimed at researching issues like exploring women home-based workers in the wake of workforce’s defeminisation in India; women’s perspective of development in ecologically fragile state of Uttarakhand; and labour mobility in Karnataka. Apart from researches, Anamika was also conveynor of several national conferences and training workshops on issues related to education, food security and justice at CSD. She returned to her hometown in Patna after joining TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) in August 2017. Her ongoing research at TISS aims at understanding how women are negotiating with the changing dynamics of twenty first century rural Bihar in the wake of male outflow and state’s policies for women. She is also the Conveynor of a lecture series on justice at TISS.

Anamika has published several articles in reputed journals like Brill, Social Change and Economic and Political Weekly. She is also recipient of some prestigious international awards, including Ford Foundation Fellowship, Margaret McNamara Fellowship, SUNY’s Doctoral Fellowship and College Fellowship. Anamika is associated with some reputed institutions and forums. She has been the Coordinator and now is one of the Authorized Signatory of the Indian Political Economy Association. She is also the President of a Bihar based organization Vikasarth.