Faculty Profile

• Sir Ratan Tata Post Doctoral Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, 2010-11
• PhD in Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2003, thesis submitted in 2001.
• MPhil in Applied Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 1998
• MA in Economics, Visva-Barati, Santiniketan 1996

• Deepita has worked as a permanent faculty member in the following academic institutions within and outside India before joining AUD
• Immediately after submitting her PhD dissertation Deepita joined as an assistant Professor in Centre for Economic and Social Studies an ICSSR institute in Hyderabad. Here she worked in two phases: Assistant Professor (2001 to 2006); Associate Professor (2007-2010)
• Economics Group, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, Associate Professor (2006-07)
• Economics Department, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, London, Lecturer (confirmed as a permanent faculty member of SOAS within a year) (2011-2014)
• During this period Deepita was also a Short-term consultant with the World Bank for three months in 2012 to write a background paper on Women’s Emerging Work Opportunities in India
• Department of Women’s Studies, Visva-Bharati. Served as the Chairperson (2014-2016)

Major areas of research:

Gender, Work and Family, Labour Market behaviour of women and men in South Asia, Industrial Organization and Institutions

Major research projects handled:

• ‘Expansion of markets and women workers: a case of garment manufacturing’, funded by UNP 2002-03, report submitted in July 2003.
• Coordinated a national workshop on ‘Strategies for Economic Empowerment of Women in AP’ sponsored by the Indian National Commission for Women, report submitted in January 2004.
• ‘Quality of Employment and Organization of Work in the Indian IT industry’, in collaboration with Dr Loraine Kennedy, member of the UR23 of the IRD, IFREDE, France under the framework of the study ‘Decentralized industrialization and Political Industrialization in India’. Report submitted in April, 2006.
• Domestic service in Post Partition West Bengal: it is mainly a self funded project with some financial assistance from SOAS, University of London and the UGC, India.
• ‘State and Business Relations in Africa and India’, 2008-2010, Principal Investigator for West Bengal chapter and joint Principal Investigator for Orissa Chapter”, Under IPPG, University of Manchester, Funded by the DFID.
• Conducted a national workshop on ‘the future directions of research and teaching in Women’s Studies in India’, August 6 and 7, 2015.
• Consultant in a Project ‘Love, Law and Labour: Child Marriage in West Bengal, School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, India funded by AJWS

Academic Achievements

• Reserve Bank of India Endowment Doctoral Fellowship (1998-99) for the period 1998-99 to 2003-04. PhD Thesis submitted in October, 2001.
• University Merit Scholar: Visva-Bharati University: 1993-94
• Shastri Indo-Canadian Fellow, 2000-01, University of Alberta and University of Calgary in Canada.
• IDPAD Visiting Fellowship at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands under the IDPAD Fellowship Programme in 2005-06.
• Sir Ratan Tata Post Doctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics, London, UK, October, 2010 to June 2011.
• A tenured faculty position, Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, London, Feb 2012.
• Selected to submit research papers from SOAS, University of London for the six yearly nation-wide research evaluation of all universities in the UK in 2014.
• In the panel of regular reviewers for Economic and Political Weekly and World Development published by the Elsevier.

A select research publications

Published Books

1. Women, Labour and the Economy in India: From Migrant Male Servants to Uprooted Girl Chilren Maids. (2016) (with Ishita Chakravarty), Routledge, London, New York.

2. Expansion of Markets and Women Workers in India: A Case Study of Selected Garment Manufacturing Firms in Andhra Pradesh(2011), LAP Lambert Academic Publishers, Germany.

Papers published in refereed Journals available from Jstor, Science Direct or from the websites of IIM (Korikode), LSE and SOAS, University of London

1.'Labour Market under Trade Liberalisation: Issues Concerning Re-allocation', 1999, Economic and Political Weekly[1], (the professional ranking of EPW is given in FN 1) Vol. 34, No.48:.M163 - M168.

2.‘Work Organization and Employment Contracts: Technological Modernization in Textile Firms’, 2002, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.37, No.8:743 - 749.

3.‘Energy and Labour Use in Industry: A Study of Andhra Pradesh’, 2003, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 38, No. 36: 3801- 3805.

4. ‘Expansion of Markets and Women Workers: A case of Indian Garment Manufacturing’, 2004, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 46: 4910-4916.

5 ‘Gender Questions in Economics’, Khnoj Ekhon (in Bangla), 2003, September, A biyearly journal on gender studies, published from Calcutta.

6. ‘Women Workers, Entrepreneurs and Behavioral Rationale: A case of Indian garment manufacturing’, 2005, Indian Journal of Labour Economics. Vol.48, No.1:101-113.

7. ‘Labour Arrangements and Bargaining Outcomes Under different Market Conditions’, 2006, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Vol.49, No.1: 121-131.

8. ‘Growing Services: An Intersectoral Analysis of State Level Data’, 2006: Economic and Political Weekly, vol.41, No. 29:3061-3067.

9. ‘Docile Oriental Women and the Organized Labour: A case of an Indian garment export park’, 2008, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 14, No.3: 439-460, Sage Publications, Los Angeles/ London/ New Delhi/ Singapore.

10. ‘Skilled Labour Specificity and the Pure Theory of International Trade: An Application to the Indian Information Technology Sector’, 2008, Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, Vol.5, No. 2: 27-37, AFP, Canada (with B. Batavia and P. Nandakumar).

11. ‘Girl Children in the Care Economy: Domestics in West Bengal’, 2008, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 43, No. 48:93-100 (with Ishita Chakravarty).

12. ‘Trade Unions and Business Firms: Unorganized manufacturing in West Bengal’, 2010. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 45, No. 6: 45-52.

13 “For Bed and Board Only”: Women and Girl Children Domestics in Post Partition Calcutta (1951-1981)’ , Modern Asian Studies , Cambridge University Press, Vol.47, Issue 2 (March, 2013) (with Ishita Chakravarty).

14. Industry, Labour and the State: Emerging Relations in the Indian State of West Bengal’ , Journal of South Asian Development, Sage Publications, (October, 2011) Vol 6, No. 2.(with Indranil Bose).

15 Lack of Economic Opportunities and Persistence of Child Marriage in West Bengal. Indian Journal of Gender Studies 25.2 (2018): 180-204.

A select Papers published in edited Books:

16. ‘Industry: Policy and Performance’ 2003, in C.H Hanumantha Rao and S. Mahendra Dev (eds.) Andhra Pradesh Development : Economic Reforms and Challenges Ahead, Centre for Economic and Social Studies and Monohar, Hyderabad.

17. ‘Nritya Shilpi Jakhon Samaj Bignani’, 2005, (in Bangla) in I. Chakravarty , B. Pain and K. Bandyopadhya (eds.) Naishobdo Bhenge , Stree together with Khnoj Akhon, Kolkata.

18. ‘Industrializing West Bengal? A cases of Institutional Stickyness’ (2013) in Kunal Sen (ed.), State Business Relations in Africa and India, Routledge, New York, London (with Indranil Bose).

19. ‘Girl Children in the Care Economy: Domestics in West Bengal’, (reprint) (2012) in Padmini Swaminathan (ed.), Women and Work essays from Economic and Political Weekly, Orient Black Swan (with Ishita Chakravarty).

21. ‘Calcutta’s Domestic Workers: Migrant Women and Girl Children’, in Kolkata in Space, Time and Imagination: Rethinking of Heritage to be published by Humboldt University, Berlin along with History Department of Jadavpur University (forthcoming).

22. ‘Schooling, Work and Marriage: The Indian Girl Children’ in Samita Sen (ed.) ‘Early Marriage in India Stree (forthcoming)

Working Papers

Apart from these published academic work Deepita has a large number of working papers and background papers published from Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, Indian Institute of Magement, Korzhikode, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, The World Bank, Delhi. All these are downloadable from the websites of these institutes and universities.

• Deepita has presented many research papers in conferences, seminars and workshops organized within India and abroad, This includes the prestigious public lecture addressed by her at the London School of Economics on 15th May, 2011.
• To mention a few important recent seminar presentations
• Presented a paper and chaired a session in UN WIDER conference in Bangkok in September, 2019
• Presented a paper in a seminar organized in the honour of Professor N Krishnaji in Trivandrum, August, 2018
• Invited to present a paper in a Workshop jointly organized by Delhi School of Economics and London School of Economics on Women’s Work on Bangladesh and West Bengal in CSSS, Kolkata, 2017
• Invited to present a paper in the Multi-Stakeholder Consultation on “Policy Options for Domestic Work in the Context of India’s Care Economy The Institute for Human Development (IHD) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) 2017 in Delhi