Naila Kabeer, Kojo Koram and Jens Lerche: Revisiting the issue of Identity in Economics

Plenary with Naila Kabeer (LSE), Kojo Koram (Birkbeck School of Law), and Jens Lerche (SOAS) at the 24th Annual AHE conference, July 2022.

Naila Kabeer is Professor of Gender and Development at the Department of Gender Studies and Department of International Development at the London School of Economics (LSE). She is also a Faculty Associate at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. Her research interests include gender, poverty, social exclusion, labour markets and livelihoods, social protection and citizenship and much of her research is focused on South and SouthEast Asia. Naila is currently involved in ERSC-DIFD Funded Research Projects on Gender and Labour Market dynamics in Bangladesh and India.

Kojo Koram is a Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck School of Law, University of London. Kojo’s work draws upon a wide array of scholarly traditions including decolonial theory, critical legal theory, historical materialism, law, and literature. Kojo has published widely, including the books Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire (2022) and The War on Drugs and the global colour line (2019). Prior to joining Birkbeck, Kojo was a Lecturer at the School of Law at the University of Essex, and prior to academia, he worked in social welfare law, as well as with youth work and teaching.

Jens Lerche is a Reader in Agrarian and Labour studies in the Department of Development Studies, SOAS. He has an MA and PhD in Social Geography from the University of Copenhagen, His research focuses on India. His research interests include the political economy of agrarian transformation, and class and caste relations in agrarian transition; the political economy of labour relations, unfree labour and rural labour migration; and struggles, movements and labour organisations; and the role of the ILO. Recent publications include the co-authored volume Ground Down by Growth. Tribe, Caste, Class, and Inequality in Twenty-First Century India; and articles on class, caste and social mobilisation, and on agrarian transition and agrarian crisis in an Indian context,. He is editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change. His present research is on inequality and poverty of Dalits and Adivasis in India, funded by the ESRC and ERC

Hosts: Surbhi Kesar (SOAS) and Devika Dutt (King’s College London)