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Overview

Biography

Kalpana Wilson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences. She works on critical international development and social justice. Her research explores questions of race/gender, labour, neoliberalism, and reproductive rights and justice, with a particular focus on South Asia and its diasporas.

She has a BA (Hons) in Economics from the University of Sussex, and an MA in Area Studies (South Asia) and a PhD in Political Economy from SOAS, University of London. She has previously taught at the London School of Economics (LSE) and at SOAS.

She is the author of ‘Race, Racism and Development: Interrogating History, Discourse and Practice’ (Zed Books, 2012) and has published widely on race, gender, international development, women’s agency and rural labour movements.

Research

Research interests

• Racism, racialisation and international development
• Diasporas in international development
• Gender, labour and globalisation
• Gender and social movements
• Transnational feminism
• Visual representations in development
• Reproductive rights and reproductive justice
• Population discourse, migration and climate justice

Research overview

My research has explored the previously under-researched question of racism and racialisation in international development. I have examined the relationships between race, capital, embodiment and resistance in transnational historical and contemporary contexts. I put forward an approach which underlines the materiality of race in development as well as its discursive aspects, combining elements of postcolonial, critical race and feminist theory with political economy. I explore themes including global population policies, reproductive justice, (anti-)fascism and racialised diasporas in development.

Secondly, building upon long-term research on rural labour movements in India, I have looked at contesting understandings of women’s agency, in the contexts of neoliberal development interventions, and social movements and collective organising. I have also examined emerging representations of women and adolescent girls in the Global South as hyper-industrious potential entrepreneurs and how this ‘new’ set of gendered and racialised representations is linked to an intensification and extension of women’s labour under neoliberal globalisation.

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of my areas of research. 

Teaching

Teaching modules

• Theorising Gender and Sexuality
• Borders, Migration and Development
• Research Methods and Skills
• Race, Environment and International Development (Level 7)
• Gender and Development
• Methods, Analysis and Techniques

Publications

External Repositories