Post:	Professor of Anthropology
Other posts:	Professor of Anthropology (Development Studies - CDE)
	Reader in Anthropology (Migration)
Location:	Arts C C240
Email:	K.Gardner@sussex.ac.uk
Telephone numbers
Internal:	2312
UK:	(01273) 606755 ext. 2312
International:	+44 1273 606755 ext. 2312

Biography

After completing her doctorate at the London School of Economics in 1990, Katy Gardner worked as an assistant social development advisor at ODA (now DfID). In 1991 she was employed as a temporary lecturer at the University of Kent, arriving at Sussex in 1993. During the 1990s Katy did various consultancies in Bangladesh, most notably concerning workers in the tea industry (for ODA) and on community participation and cyclone shelters (for the EU).

Research

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'.

 

 

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

 

Publications

Books
Songs at the River's Edge: Stories from a Bangladeshi Village, Virago, 1991 (reprinted, Rupa Press, New Delhi, 1992; reprinted with new forward, Pluto Press, London, 1997)
Global Migrants, Local Lives: Migration and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995
Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge, co-authored with David Lewis, Pluto Press, London, 1996 (now in 3rd reprint)
Narrative, Age and Migration: Life history and the Life Course Amongst Bengali Elders in London, Berg, Oxford, 2002

Edited Collections
Transnational Households and Ritual, co-edited with Ralph Grillo, Special Edition of Global Networks 2(3), 2002
Migration and Modernities in South Asia, co-edited with Filippo Osella, Special edition of Contributions to Indian Sociology 37(1 & 2), 2003
Migration and Modernities in South Asia, co-edited with Filippo Osella, Sage Press, New Delhi, 2004

Articles
'Londoni-gram: International migration and the village context in rural Bangladesh', New Community 18(4): 579-590, 1992
'Desh-Bidesh: Sylheti images of home and away', Man 28(9): 1-15, 1993 (reprinted in S. Vertovec and R. Cohen, eds. Migration, Diaspora and Transnationalism, London: Edward Elgar 1999; also in H. Goulburne, ed. Race and Ethnicity: Critical Concepts in Sociology, Vol. 2. London: Routledge, 2001)
'Mullahs, migrants and miracles: travel and transformation in rural Bangladesh', Contributions to Indian Sociology N.S. 27(2): 213-235, 1993
'Purdah, female power, and cultural change: a Sylheti example', Journal for Social Studies 64: 1-24, Centre for Social Studies, Dhaka, 1994
'Death, Burial and Bereavement amongst Bengali Muslims in Tower Hamlets, East London', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 24(3): 507-521, 1999
'Dominant paradigms overturned or "business as usual"?: Development discourse and the White Paper on International Development', co-authored with David Lewis, Critique of Anthropology 20(1): 15-29, 2000
'Death of a migrant: transnational death ritual and gender among British Sylhetis', Global Networks 2(3): 191-205, 2002
'Transnational households and ritual: an overview, co-authored with Ralph Grillo, Global Networks 2(3): 179-191, 2002
'Migration and modernities in South Asia: an introduction', co-authored with Filippo Osella, Migration and Modernities in South Asia, Special edition of Contributions to Indian Sociology 37(1 & 2), 2003
'The Transnational work of kinship and caring: Bengali British marriages in historical perspective', Global Networks 6(4): 373-387, 2006
'Place, social protection and migration in Bangladesh: a Londoni village in Biswanath', co-authored with Zahir Ahmed, Working Paper T18, Development Research Centre on Migration, Poverty and Globalisation
(http://www.migrationdrc.org/publications/working_papers.html)
'Degrees of separation: informal social protection, relatedness and migration in Biswanath, Bangladesh', Journal of Development Studies, forthcoming
'Keeping it connected: migration and social capital in a Londoni village, Sylhet', working paper