Associate Professor Nandini Gooptu and DPhil student Garima Jaju are co-convening a panel on 'New geographies and imaginaries of work in the global South' on Thursday 20 June.

The panel analyses the socio-cultural life of work and 'non-work' in the local context of the global South, amid larger global shifts towards increasing political authoritarianism, individual self-responsibilisation, and precariousness, and its implications for political imagination today.

The panel includes a paper co-authored by Professor Gooptu and Departmental Lecturer Zaad Mahmood titled 'Paradox of precarity: working for Uber in the city of Kolkata'. The paper problematises the debate between flexible work and precarity and shows how employment in the platform economy perpetuates informality but also offers economic mobility and subjective wellbeing.

It also features a paper by DPhil student Amogh Dhar Sharma, titled  '"You've got to be a hustler here": the emergent profession of political consulting in India'. Political consulting has become an increasingly popular profession for middle-class citizens in India. The paper analyses how citizens use this profession to channel their participation in politics, the social imaginaries in this profession, and how this work shapes their political subjectivities.

In addition, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow Robtel Neajai Pailey will be giving a keynote on 'De-centring the “white gaze” of development' on Thursday 20 June.

The keynote will be livestreamed.

ODID will also have a stall in the Book Exhibit, in the foyer of the Jenny Lee building.

Visit the conference website.