Professor Amrita Pande (HoD)
BA Delhi MA Delhi School of Economics MA PhD Massachusetts
Consultation Times:
(by appointment)
Please email me in advance
My research lies at the intersection of gender, globalization and the intimate, with a focus on transnational reproduction, repro-genetic technologies, and multimodal ethnography. My most recent books include Epistemic Justice and the Postcolonial University (With Chaturvedi and Daya, Wits and NYU Press, 2023), Birth Controlled: Selective Reproduction and Neo Eugenics in India and South Africa (Manchester Univ Press, 2022), and Scripting defiance: Four Sociological Vignettes (With Ari Sitas, Sumangala Damodaran, Wiebke Keim, and Nicos Trimikliniotis, Tulika Books and Columbia University Press, 2022). My award-winning book Wombs in Labor: Transnational Surrogacy in India (Columbia University Press 2014) has recently been released in India (Primus Press). Related publications have appeared in international peer-reviewed journals like Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Gender and Society, Critical Social Policy, International Migration Review, Qualitative Sociology, Feminist Studies, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Anthropologica, PhiloSOPHIA, Reproductive BioMedicine and in numerous edited volumes and newspapers.Most articles are available for download at https://uct.academia.edu/Amritapande
Over the past two decades I have conducted multi-sited research on fertility clinics, traveling egg provision and cross-border surrogacy in India, Cambodia, Ghana and South Africa. I have written for national newspapers across the world and have appeared in Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed on the BBC, Sarah Carey’s Newstalk on Irish radio, DR2 Deadline on Danish National television, TRT world, Turkey, and on SABC2 and SAfM, South Africa to discuss my work on the global fertility industry. In my other avatar I am an educator-performer touring the world with a performance lecture series, Made in India: Notes from a Baby farm (co-produced by Riksteatern, Sweden and Global Studies Production, Denmark) based on my ethnographic work on surrogacy. In 2024, I was a Visiting Scholar at Women’s studies Research Centre, Brandeis University, Visiting Researcher in the Sociology department at Boston University and a Visiting Researcher the Institut Convergences Migration (ICM) in Paris. See the events page of my personal website for details on my public lectures in 2024.
In 2022 I started the Women Walk at Midnight (WWaM) movement in South Africa, to normalize the presence of women in public spaces at night and reclaim our streets. The movement now has over 1000+ members and has walked, at midnight, over 20 neighbourhoods in all parts of Cape Town. As the founder of the WWaM movement in South Africa, I addressed the 23rd International Walk21 Conference, in Kigali, Rwanda in 2023. For more details join our Instagram page.
I currently supervise those who are interested in research connected to globalisation and inequalities based on race, gender and sexuality, as well as topics related to reproduction, reproductive violence, and reproductive health.