Alankrita Anand

Biography

Alankrita works at the intersection of social science and medicine, studying conceptualisations of health and illness, and experiences of marriage, household dynamics and care for women married as minors in India. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of York and a Master's in Women's Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

At Keele, Alankrita is developing publications from her doctoral work, and carrying out public engagement on early marriage and reproductive politics with women married as adolescents, along with development practitioners, feminist activists, and fellow researchers in India and in the UK.

Research and scholarship

Alankrita's scholarship draws on traditions in women's studies, medical anthropology and medical sociology. while engaging with global health and development. Her ongoing writing on early marriage and women's health in Bihar, India, breaks down two predominant ideas: that age is the most significant determinant of married adolescent women’s poor reproductive health, and that early marriage is inevitably violative and a barrier to women’s care. Drawing on interviews, focus group discussions and ethnographic observations with women married out of choice or force, the wider research prompts an imagination of young women's marriages as relationships characterised by love, care, neglect and abuse, in which husbands exercise authority in both benevolent and abusive ways, which in turn is navigated (evoked, accepted, resisted) by women to maximise their care and to 'feel cared for' by their husbands outside of or despite access to institutional care.

During the postdoctoral fellowship, Alankrita is developing further research to examine how women’s experience of fertility—as forged and challenged in the household—translates to feminist advocacy around fertility, in India and transnationally.

Collaborations and grants awards

• ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship