I have studied women’s health and safety from a feminist perspective, focusing on surveillance tools used to monitor women’s bodies by the state and private sector, as well as the monitoring of women’s health through data systems. My work has been based in India, bringing a prominent Global South lens on concepts such as privacy, bodily autonomy, and ’empowerment’. My work on the Mother and Child Tracking System in India takes an in-depth look at the collection of reproductive health data in the country. I examine the political economy of data systems, and how present systems tie in with the history of reproductive health by giving primacy to population control over women’s rights and autonomy. In my work on surveillance, I adopt the framework of urban data justice to critically examine which stakeholders data design and flows are optimised for, who remains in the surveillance gap, and who owns the infrastructures of surveillance.
My projects are undertaken from a policy perspective, to understand the successes and failures of current policy frameworks that regulate women’s health and labour. I devise recommendations for just and equitable policy frameworks, for both the government and the private sector. Another key impact in my work is the centring of voices from the Global South, often from groups at the margins of governmental policymaking. I work with grassroots organisations such as women-led labour unions to bring their perspectives to the forefront by experimenting with feminist methodologies that can assure that.
