Dr Hamsa Rajan

Beginning in 2003, I lived in China for six years, in Nanjing, Jiangsu province as well as in various towns of Qinghai, home to many officially designated ‘Tibetan autonomous’ prefectures.

Prior to becoming an academic, my time in China was spent working in various capacities, as a staff member of two non-profit foundations, one aiding orphans and disabled children, and the other improving public health knowledge and infrastructure in remote Tibetan villages and nomadic settlements; as an English teacher in both Chinese- and Tibetan-medium secondary schools; and as a Chinese-English and Tibetan-English translator and interpreter.

More recently, my time in China is spent in research and fieldwork. I research gender relations in Tibetan families, including dynamics of abuse, the ways in which household economic production impacts women’s vulnerability to maltreatment in the home, and interactions between gender relations and ethnic minority politics. My work falls in the intersections of Sinology, sociology/anthropology, and feminist theory.