Panchali Ray is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Krea University.  She completed her BA in History from Calcutta University (Kolkata), MA in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Science (Mumbai) and a PhD in Gender Studies from Jadavpur University (Kolkata), India. Before joining Krea, she was part of the faculty at the School of Women’s Studies in Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Her book Politics of Precarity: Gendered Subjects and the Healthcare Industry in Contemporary Kolkata (OUP, 2019) focused on the stigmatisation of nurses and nursing aides and the persistence of gender and caste in the profession. Subsequently, she worked on nationalism, gender and politics and edited a volume Women Speak Nation: Gender, Culture, and Politics (Routledge, 2020), as well as a special issue Thinking Gender, Thinking Nation: Ideology, Representations, and Women’s Movements (South Asian History and Culture, 2018). As an extension of her work on gender, labour, precarity and feminist politics she has published in journals such as Contemporary South Asia, South Asia Research, Economic and Political Weekly, South Asian History and Culture, Journal of International Women’s Studies, amongst other. Her forthcoming publications include the co-edited volume Teaching/Writing Resistance: Women’s Studies in Contemporary Times, which emerges from her engagement with feminist knowledge production and the question of interdisciplinarity.

Ray’s current areas of interest include rivers, borders, migration, citizenship and care regimes in Bengal. Her current book project is an ethnographic study that examines how the increasing rise of right-wing nationalism in India is changing the contours of solidarity and intimacy between communities, in the chars (sandbars) of Bengal borderlands. Tracing the making of char communities (1960s onwards) and comparing it with the current political dispensation and legal regimes, Ray examines how Dalit and Muslim farmers residing on the Indian side of the border are now the negative subject of politics to be expelled from the imagination of the nation-state.

Ray offers courses on gender studies as well as thematic seminars on labour, precarity, violence and the state in South Asia.

Research

• Riverine lands (chars)
• Bengal Borderlands
• Gender and Caste
• Care Labour and Precarity
• Migration and Mobility

Publications

Monograph/Edited Volumes

2024: Ray, P. and S. Bano. (Eds). Teaching/Writing Resistance: Women’s Studies in Contemporary Times, New Delhi: Orient Black Swan

2020:  Ray, P. (Ed). Women Speak Nation: Gender, Culture and Politics,  London and New Delhi: Routledge. (Awarded ‘Outstanding Academic Title’ Award 2020 by CHOICE Reviews, USA)

2019: Ray, P. Politics of Precarity: Gendered Subjects and the HealthCare Industry in Contemporary Kolkata, New Delhi: Oxford University Press

Edited Special Issue

2018:  Ray, P. (Ed). Special Issue. “Thinking Gender, Thinking Nation: Ideology, Representations and Women’s Movements”, South Asian History and Culture: Volume 9, Issue 4

Peer Review Journal Essays

2020. Ray, P. ‘Nursing in Kolkata: Everyday Politics of Labour, Power and Subjectivities’, South Asia Research, 40(1), 40–57.

2019. Ray, P.  ‘Women in/and Trade Unions: Consciousness, Agency and (Im)possibilities of Alliances amongst Nurses and Attendants in Kolkata’, Contemporary South Asia, 27:4, 502-515.

2019. Ray, P. ‘Towards a Politics of Pain: Building Solidarities, Breaking Silences in Contemporary Chhattisgarh, India’, Journal of International Women’s Studies, 20(2), 271-284.

2018. Ray, P. ‘Political Motherhood and a Spectacular Resistance: (Re) examining the Kangla Fort Protest, Manipur’, South Asian History and Culture, 9(4): 435-448.

2018. Ray,  P. ‘Thinking Gender, Thinking Nation: An Introduction’, South Asian History and Culture, 9(4): 373-379.

2016. Ray, P. “Is This Even Work?’ Nursing Care’ and Stigmatised Labour’, Economic and Political Weekly. 47 (2). 60-69.

Book Chapters

2024. Ray, P. and Bano, S. “Teaching/Writing Resistance: An Introduction” in Ray, P and S Bano. (Eds). Teaching/Writing Resistance: Women’s Studies in Contemporary Times: 1-15: New Delhi: Orient Black Swan

2024. Ray, P.  “Women’s Studies is Dead. Long Live Women’s Studies!” in Ray, P and S Bano. (Eds). Teaching/Writing Resistance: Women’s Studies in Contemporary Times:144-163: New Delhi: Orient Black Swan

2023. Ray, P. ‘Institutionalizing Feminine Caste-based Labour: Nurses and Nursing Aides in Kolkata’ in C.Wichterich and M. John (Eds.) Who Cares? Care Extraction and the Struggles of Indian Health Workers: 33-49: New Delhi: Zubaan.

2020. Ray, P.  ‘Trade Unions and the Politics of Gender: Nurses and Nursing Attendants in the Contemporary City of Kolkata, India’ in Artus et al, Arbeitskonflikte sind Geschlechterkämpfe: Sozialwissenschaftliche und Hstorische Perspektiven; 384-397: Muenster: Westphalian Steamboat

2020. Ray, P. ‘Caring or Whoring? Nurses and the Politics of Representation, Colonial To Contemporary Calcutta’ in Anuradha Roy and Melitta Waligora (Eds) Kolkata in Space, Time and Imagination, Vol 2; 89-112: New Delhi: Primus Books

2020. Ray, P. ‘Resisting AFSPA, Fighting the Nation: An Interview with Irom Sharmila Chanu’ in Panchali Ray (ed). Women Speak Nation: Gender, Culture and Politics, 187-194: London and New Delhi: Routledge

2020. Ray, P.  ‘Narratives from Bastar: An Interview with Soni Sori’ in Panchali Ray (ed). Women Speak Nation: Gender, Culture and Politics, 195-208: London and New Delhi: Routledge

2020. Ray, P.  ‘Women Speak Nation: An Introduction’ in Panchali Ray (ed). Women Speak Nation: Gender, Culture and Politics, 1-16: London and New Delhi: Routledge

2019. Ray, P. ‘Nursing Labour, Employment Regimes, and Affective Spaces: Experiencing Migration in the City of Kolkata’ in S. Irudaya Rajan and N. Neetha (eds). Migration, Gender and Care Economy. 47-68. London and New York: Routledge

2016. Ray, P. ‘Care (un)skilled: Fragmented Markets and Nursing Labour, Contemporary Kolkata’ in Fernandez, Bina, Meena Gopal, Orlanda Ruthven (eds.) Land, Labour and Livelihoods: Indian Women’s Perspectives. 239-260. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Book Reviews

2024: Ray, P. Book Review. ‘A Thousand Tiny Cuts: Mobility and Security across the Bangladesh- India Borderlands’ Border Criminologies

2023. Ray, P.  Book Review.‘ Unfree Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States” British Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(1),223-225

2022. Ray, P. Book Review. ‘Intimate  City’.  Doing Sociology.

2019. Ray, P. Book Review. ‘State without Honour: Women Workers in India’s Anganwadis.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 27(1):157–59.

2016. Ray, P. Book Review. ‘Feeding a Thousand Souls: Women, Ritual, Ecology in India – An exploration of the kolam’, South Asian History and Culture, 10(4), 472-474

2014. Ray, P. Book Review. ‘Me and My Plays’, Kindle Magazine

Teaching Modules

Currently Teaching

• Gender, Culture and Politics: Feminist Thought and Practice (Required Course)
• Anthropology of Violence: State, Power and Politics (Elective Course)
• Work Labour and Precarity: The New Economy (Elective Course)
• Exploring the Social and Historical (Introductory Course)

Previously Taught

• Gender Relations in Contemporary India
• Gender and Development
• Feminist Thought and Practice
• Research Methodologies
• Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies