Katy GardnerResearch
Katy Gardner's doctoral research examined the cultural and social changes associated with international migration and globalisation in Bangladesh, resulting in her monograph Global Migrants, Local Lives: Travel and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh (OUP 1995). Katy is also interested in the relationship between anthropology and development, especially in recent critiques of development as 'discourse'. Her book Development, Anthropology and the Post-modern Challenge (Pluto Press, 1996; with David Lewis) reflects both the theoretical and practical issues arising from this relationship. More recently she has extended her interest in the Bengali diaspora through fieldwork conducted amongst Bengali elders in East London. Her monograph, Age, Narrative and Migration: The Life Course and Life Histories amongst Bengali Elders in London (Berg, 2002) analyses the elders' narratives of migration, ageing and illness in the UK, and suggests that transnational migration can be usefully understood as a gendered and embodied experience. As part of her on-going interest in transnational migration, Katy has published an edited collection on Transnational Migration and Household Ritual (Special Edition of Global Networks, 2002; with Ralph Grillo). She has also edited a collection that draws together current work on migration within South Asia (Migration and Modernity in South Asia, Sage, 2004; with Filippo Osella). More recently, she researched the relationship between internal seasonal migration and overseas migration in a project funded by the Development Research Centre in Migration, Poverty and Globalisation at Sussex. In 2006 she received funding from the AHRC, as part of its Migration, Identities and Diaspora Programme, for research on transnational South Asian children. This project involved arts based methods as well as more conventional interviewing and participant observation, and culminated in an exhibition of children's art, held at the Museum of Childhood in Spring, 2009 (see: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7898294.stm>)
Since 2008 Katy has also been working on a project funded by ESRC/Dfid on Mining, Livelihoods and Social Networks in Bangladesh. This has involved returning to her original fieldwork village in Bangladesh, where a multinational company is currently mining natural gas. The project investigates the relationships between transnational migration, global capitalism and resistance, plus multinational policies and practices of 'Corporate Social Responsibility'.
See Katy's website :
Recent DPhil Students
Zahir Ahmed - Knowledge, Risk and Power: Agriculture and Development Discourse in a Coastal Region of Bangladesh (awarded 2002)
Kanwal Mand - Gendered Places, Transnational Lives: Sikh Women in Tanzania, India and Britain (awarded 2003)
Israt Ahmed - The Construction of Childhood in Monipur: Negotiating Boundaries through Activities (awarded 2004)
Nick Nisbett - Knowledge, Identity, Place and (Cyber) Space: Growing Up Male and Middle Class in Bangalore (awarded 2005)
Laura Griffith - Experiencing Motherhood, problems and the construction of post natal depression in Tower Hamlets (awarded 2006)Rozana Rahsheed - Livelihoods and Social Protection in a Migrant village in Comilla, Bangladesh (2008)
Current DPhil Students
Ramy Aly - Arab Identity in London
Benji Zeitlyn - Code Switching and Translation amongst British Bengali children in London
Sadid Nuremowla: Mining and Resistance in Bangladesh