Biography:

Rama Devi is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the CSH. She obtained her doctorate in Sociology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. Before joining the CSH, she taught as an Adjunct Faculty at the School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences, KREA University. Her research interests broadly lie in the domains of social stratification; discrimination, exclusion, and inequality; urban sociology. Her doctorate thesis focuses on how the ascriptive identity of caste interacts and constitutes city spaces and the role it plays in shaping urban stratification in Indian cities for which the focus was on the metropolitan city of Delhi. Her monograph (forthcoming) attempts to unravel the meaning and manifestation of caste in contemporary India to understand how socio-economic inequalities are reinforced in the urban landscape. It explores three intersecting dimensions encompassing urban inter-caste interactions, intergenerational mobility, and political engagements of members of different Dalit caste groups.

Her present research at the CSH will focus on the occupational aspirations of urban Dalit women and the political understanding and aspirations of Dalit youths in Delhi. Co-authoring a paper on understanding the question of proportional representation in the Indian Foreign Service, she is also expanding her research on bureaucracy and caste.

CV Rama Devi

ORCID web page: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4448-3238

Recent Publications:

1. Rama Devi & Sawmya Ray (2024). We know what is good for her: Hunar, work and respectable work for women, Sociological Bulletin: Journal of Indian Sociological Society, Sage.
2. Deepshikha Sharma and Rama Devi (2023). Democracy Denied: The Fraught Realities of Higher Education for Dalits, LSE South Asia Center, July 10, 2023.
3. Rama Devi & Sawmya Ray (2022). Mahaul and Mazboori: Educational Aspirations and Realities of Dalit Youth in Delhi, International Journal for Qualitative Studies in Education. DOI, 37 (1): 294-313 Routledge.
4. Rama Devi & Sawmya Ray (2021). Negotiating Exclusion and Precarity: Marginalized Urban Youth, Education, and Employment in Delhi, The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 64 (4): 923-941, Springer.
5. Rama Devi and Bhim Reddy (2017). A Misplaced Trial: Delhi Municipal Elections 2017. Economic and Political Weekly, 52 (18), Sameeksha.