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.
Monograph/Edited Volumes
(co-edited with Shadab Bano), ‘Teaching/Writing Resistance: Women’s Studies in Contemporary Times” (Under contract with Orient Black Swan), New Delhi
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.
2020. 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.
2020. 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.
2020. Ray, P.‘Political Motherhood and a Spectacular Resistance: (Re) examining the Kangla Fort Protest, Manipur’, South Asian History and Culture, 9(4): 435-448.
2020. Ray, P.‘Thinking Gender, Thinking Nation: An Introduction’, South Asian History and Culture, 9(4): 373-379.
2020. Ray, P. ‘‘Is This Even Work?’ Nursing Care and Stigmatised Labour’, Economic and Political Weekly. 47 (2). 60-69.
Book Chapters
2023 (in press). Ray, P. and Bano, S. “Teaching/Writing Resistance: An Introduction” in Ray, P and Bano, S. (eds) Teaching/Writing Resistance: Women’s Studies in Contemporary Times (Under contract with Orient Black Swan), New Delhi
2023 (in press). Ray, P. “Women’s Studies is Dead. Long Live Women’s Studies!” in Ray, P and Bano, S. (eds) ‘Teaching/Writing Resistance: Women’s Studies in Contemporary Times” (Under contract with Orient Black Swan), New Delhi
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
2023. Ray, P. “Book Review: Rhacel Salazar Parreñas. Unfree Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States” British Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(1),223-225
2022. Ray, P. ‘Book Review: Manjima Bhattacharya. Intimate city’ Doing Sociology.
2020 Ray, P. “Book Review: M. S. Sreerekha. State without Honour: Women Workers in India’s Anganwadis.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 27(1):157–59.
2019 Ray, P. ‘Book Review. Vijaya Nagarajan. ‘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. Mahesh Dattani. Me and My Plays’, Kindle Magazine
Invited Commentary/Newspaper/Blog/Newsletters and other Digital Media
2023 The Crisis in Nursing: Gender, Caste, and Labour in Bengal. Medico Friend Circle Bulletin 381, 30-35, March 2023
2022 The anxiety of the Bengali bhadralok and the modern woman: Why does the body matter? Kafila – 12 Years Of A Common Journey
2022 Remembering bell hooks. Sambhashan vol 2 (issue 4), University of Mumbai.
2022 Is the Hijab Question a Feminist Question? The Hindu.
2021. bell hooks: Feminist, sister, ally. The Hindu.
2021 Video Interview, The Imperative to Rethink Women’s Studies Programs: Who’s Afraid of the Humanities? A Lankan Podcast
2021. Solitude in times of pandemic: The banality of ‘Geeli Pucchi’ and everyday longings, Café
2020. ‘The Gendered Myth of The Front-Line Care Giver As ‘Warrior’’ Kafila – 12 Years Of A Common Journey
2019. ‘From Revered Icon to Unruly Subject – Irom Sharmila and the Politics of Gender’ Kafila – 12 Years Of A Common Journey
2018. ‘The Dilemma of Women’s Studies: Contradictions and Institutionalisation’ Newsletter, School of Women’s Studies, Volume 35: 16-19
2017. ‘Dhorshoner Raajnaitik Arhaniti: Somosamaik Chhattisgarhar Adivasi Naari Ebong Santrash Bahini’ (The Political Economy of Rape: Adivasi Women and Armed Forces, Contemporary Chhattisgarh). Samaj Bigyan o Prakriti. 4 (2). 23-26
2016. ‘Care regimes and transnational migration: what happens to those left behind?’ in Migration Narratives: The SHRAM Blog
2016. LGBT Movement (Module 14) in Social Movement (Code 14), Sociology (Subject).MHRD, under National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT).
2015 ‘Thinking emotively: Spinoza and the politics of affect’, Newsletter, School of Women’s Studies, Volume 33.
Currently Teaching
Previously Taught
