Short presentation

I am Assistant Professor at the Global Health Section of University of Copenhagen.

Trained in history and anthropology, my research and teaching are highly inter-disciplinary. My research has mapped the changing contours of work and health in India with growing socio-economic inequality in the country over the last three decades. I trace the proliferation of precarious jobs and how workers from a range of disadvantaged backgrounds navigate everyday risks at work.

I have been conducting participatory, ethnographic fieldwork and oral history research in urban India since 2015. In September 2025, I was awarded a fellowship by the Wenner-Gren Association for Anthropology to write a book based on my decade-long research.

My publications document and analyze how work harms people, and how they find ways to combat such harm. I investigate the consequences on work and health from a a range of risks: factory injury and finger loss, fires, floods, the coronavirus pandemic and the lack of legal provisions for workers' health and safety.  I have also written extensively on how workers in risky, precarious jobs use trade unions, but also caste, regional and religous associations, to claim rights and forge safer, healthier work environments.

I completed my PhD at Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen (2014 - 2019) where my doctoral  research won the prestigious Elite Forsk PhD prize awarded by the Danish Ministry for Higher Education and Research.

From April 2025, I am also involved in a research project on health workers and their challenges at the workplace in India and Kenya. The project is part of a larger intitiative titled Partnership for Education of Health Professionals  funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. 

Most Recent Publications:

You can also hear me present this research on the anthropology podcast Anthropotamus

Teaching and Supervision:

I teach on different courses of the MSc Global Health and Master in Disaster Management programmes:

SGLK20003U The Anthropology of Global Health (Course Leader)
SGLK20001U Health Research Methodology (Teach on Qualitative Research Methods)
Disaster Recovery Planning and Development (Co-course Leader)

I also teach on the Summer School Creating Health Cities (SGLK22001U) and the PhD course on Advanced Qualitative Research in Public and Global Health 

I am available for supervision of Masters theses and projects on the following broad themes
- Work and health
- Health and care workers
- Urban health and disasters
- Migration, health and environment