Current Research

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My dissertation examines middle and upper-middle class women's experiences in family disputes. I conducted 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork (2021-2022) in New Delhi, India. This entailed observations, primarily meetings in legal offices and hearings in courts and mediation centers; in-depth interviews (n=55) and last, archival research consisting of case documents and judgments. Through this qualitative study, I examine the familial and legal processes through which gendered dispossession occurs at various stages of the dispute.

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My study has resulted in two manuscripts to date:

Invisible Money and Gendered Dispossession: Relational Work in Matrimonial Disputes in India examines the meaning and role of women's money in matrimonial disputes highlighting the gendered and temporal nature of relational work. I argue that women's money— like women's labor is also rendered invisible. This article is the recipient of the SSSP Gender Division Best Student Paper Award and has also received an honorable mention for the ASA Sex and Gender Section Sally Hacker Graduate Student Paper Award.

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Gendered Wealth: Mediation, Settlement Agreements and Child Support examines mothers’ plight in seeking child support from non-custodial parents. I highlight how negotiations through mediations are inherently gendered.

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In addition to my dissertation, I am co-authoring an article to examine the individual and contextual effects of women’s employment on intimate partner violence in India using data from two rounds of National Family Health Survey (NFHS).

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