Raksha Gopal

Raksha Gopal is a PhD candidate in International Relations/Political Science at the Geneva Graduate Institute and a researcher at the Gender Centre where she is a part of the ‘Gendering Survival from the Margins’ project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). 

Her doctoral research uses ethnographic methods to document and analyse the gendered dimensions of forced displacement and refugee governance in India, with a focus on how Rohingya refugee mothers negotiate everyday insecurity, exclusion, and care in conditions of prolonged statelessness. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals like the International Migration Review and the International Feminist Journal of Politics.

She has completed a Master’s in International Relations from the Geneva Graduate Institute and a Bachelor’s in political science from the University of Delhi. She has previously worked with the World Organisation Against Torture in Switzerland on advocacy and jurisprudence relating to migrants and asylum seekers. 

Her research interests include feminist approaches to security, theories of violence, care and social reproduction, border regimes, and ethnographies of the state. 

Research at ODID

At the Refugee Studies Centre, Raksha is continuing her work on her PhD monograph, which traces an ethnography of mothering practices among stateless Rohingya mothers in camps and settlements in Delhi. Specifically, she is working on issues of gendered camp infrastructures, the humanitarian border, and women’s maternal bodies as sites of bordering and exclusion.