I am an anthropologist and ethnographer by training, and within the British anthropological imperative, my expertise is regional-specific. I engaged with my research on the State of Maharashtra in the rural and urban contexts. My research primarily focuses on: anthropology of gender and sexuality, medical anthropology, anthropology of the body and embodiment, community health, postcolonial studies and the anthropology of decolonization.
My research falls within ‘structural inequality’, as one of the thematic research areas under CPS, IITB.
Besides the ‘inequality’ as mentioned, I aim to build upon my anthropological expertise from a policy/development-led research lens, interrogating globalization as well as localization of the social structure, and how human actors negotiate. In terms of the social structure that intersects multiple social factors: my contribution aims to gender strategies, gender-based empowerment, disenfranchisement, violence, labour, employability and varied marginalities. My research-based approach is fieldwork and in depth ethnography, and further to collate those experiences (and ‘voices’) to the policy framework. This radical underpinning is perhaps a first-hand exercise to build a nuanced policy-based research on multiple vexes of ‘gender’, that is based on participatory approach, governance and social change, gender development and sustainability, capacity building and knowledge sharing, and health-based empowerment and development.
I have worked with the Ministry of health and Social Development, Government of India, New Delhi. I have also taught at the Delhi School of Economics, department of Sociology. With further engagements as consultant with the United Nations, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on several projects.
• Gender and Development
• Community Health and Empowerment
• Participatory Research in the Third World
• Gender, health and Empowerment.
• Gender and Sustainable Development
• BA (honours), Sociology, University of Calcutta
• MA (Sociology), University of Pune, Department of Sociology
• MA (Development Studies), University of Sussex
• PhD (D. Phil) University of Sussex
• 2020- 2024: Senior Research Associate- University of Pretoria, Department of Social Sciences, South Africa.
• Book Review Editor : ‘Sociological Bulletin’ (Indian Sociological Association- Sage Pub.).
• Editorial Board: ‘Journal of African Studies and Development’.
• Guest Editor- Journal of Asian and African Studies (Sage Pub.).
• Guest Editor- Sage (journals and books editing). Journals: Indian Journal of Gender Studies.
• Member- Indian Sociological Society.
• Member: American Anthropological Association.
• In Association: Association for Asian Studies.
• In Association – National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA).
• Roy, A. 2014. How Masculinity Changes? MASVAW initiative in Rural Maharashtra, India IDS Bulletin (IDS Bulletin, Vol. 45, No. 1. ISBN Number: 1759- 5436). [Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, UK].
• Roy, A. 2014. ‘Those Voices Unheard’: Re-negotiating Masculinity, Participation and Change (Journal of Asian and African Studies, DOI: 10:1177/0021909614543221 ). Sage Pub.
• Roy, A. 2016. Illicit Worlds of the Indian Dance by Anna Moroccom (Book review: Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 65. No. 3 ). Sage Pub.
• Roy, A. 2016. Sexualizing the Body: Passionate Aesthetics and Embodied Desires (Indian Journal of Gender Studies,Vol. 24(2): 1-23; DOI: 10.1177/0971521517697879 ). Sage Pub.
• Roy, A. 2017. Mumbai Fables: Cosmopolitanism and the Sexual Ethos. (Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. Vol. 2[2]:98-112). [Journal by: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, Indexed in UGC Care- PRINT ISSN: 0972-1401].
• Roy, A. 2018. Intimate Relations: Social Reform and the Late Nineteenth- century South Asian Novel. (Book Review: Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 67(1):120-140). Sage. Pub.
• Roy, A. 2020. Spivak alert! Conceiving sexuality from the subaltern lens, Gender, Place & Culture, Vol. 28, Issue 2: 1-17. DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2020.1769563. Routledge.
• Roy, A. 2020. Revisiting the epistemic terrains of gender, sex, and empowerment through four sites of engagement in India: Introducing a conversation, Gender, Place & Culture, Vol. 28, Issue 2:153-160. DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2020.1772202. Routledge.
• Roy, A. 2020. Non-normative Sexuality Studies. Oxford Bibliographies. DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199756384-0238. Oxford University Press.
• Roy, A. 2020. Microfinance, Middle Class and the Sexual subculture in the Contemporary Bangladesh. In, Ahonaa Roy (ed.). ‘Gender, Sexuality, Decolonization: South Asia in the World Perspective’. Routledge: NY &London.
• Roy, A. 2020. Introduction Chapter , In., Ahonaa Roy (ed.)., Gender, Sexuality, Decolonization: South Asia in the World Perspective. ‘Gender, Sexuality, Decolonization: South Asia in the World Perspective’. Routledge: NY, London, New Delhi. ISBN: 9781003025474
• Roy, A. 2021. Biopolitics and Im/Possible Citizenship: Gender, Epidemiology and Subversion in India, Journal of Decolonial Studies. DOI: 10.35293/jdd.v3il.3717
• 2022- Cosmopolitan Sexuality: Gender, Embodiments, Biopolitics in India. (Cambridge, London, New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9781108490443
FORTHCOMING
• Making ‘Miss Diva’: idealizing Femininity and New Embodied Nationalism in India. South Asian Popular Culture. Routledge.
• Informal Urbanism and COVID-19: Gender, Health and Community Engagement in the Dharavi Slum of Mumbai. Contributions to Indian Sociology. SAGE
• Gender and Post-Continentality: Epistemic Liberation and de-Silencing South Asia. The Pluralist, University of Illinois Press
EDITED VOLUME
• Roy, Ahonaa. (2020): Gender, Sexuality, Decolonization: South Asia in the World Perspective. London, NY: Routledge.
• Volume Editor – South Asia. Resistances. Subversion: Gender and Pluriversal Voices from the Margins [In Press –by 2024].
• Volume Editor [with, Vasu Reddy]. Transnational Contact Zones: African and South Asian Sexualities and Gender. [ In Press –by 2024].
