Urvi Khaitan

'Women and Work in the Indian Economy: Empire, Famine, and Labour during the Second World War'

I am a DPhil student in Economic and Social History, and my work focuses on gender, labour, and empire in twentieth-century South Asia. I am particularly interested in the effects of war and famine on women's work and survival, and my doctoral thesis aims to examine how gender, caste, class, and empire shaped working women's experiences in the turbulent South Asian economy during World War II. If you'd like to know more about my research, you can read my blog for the Royal Historical Society's 'Writing Race' series or view a talk I gave at the British Library. This 9-minute video, made for the 'Indian Women & War Project' offers a brief preview of some of my ongoing work. 

I am currently Royal Historical Society Marshall Fellow, 2022-23, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research. I am also part of the Global History of Capitalism Project at Brasenose College and the History Faculty. The first three years of my DPhil were supported by an Oxford Graduate Scholarship, generously funded by Kellogg College. I hold an undergraduate degree in History from St. Stephen's College, Delhi and an MPhil in Economic and Social History (Distinction) from the University of Oxford, where my dissertation on women coal miners in colonial India was awarded the 2019 Feinstein Prize. 

I am a member of the Women's History Network steering committee. At Oxford, I co-convened the Transnational and Global History Seminar between 2020 and 2022. I am also a Research Assistant on The Global Thinkers Project, Oxford. 

Publication:

'Women beneath the Surface: Coal and the Colonial State in India during the Second World War', War & Society, 39/3 (August 2020), pp. 171-188.

The article, which is part of the special edition 'Marginalised Histories of the Second World War', is open access. 

Blogs:

'Radical Objects: ‘These are not ordinary women’', History Workshop Online

'Unheard and Unseen: Mining Women in British India', Social History Society Exchange (runner up in the 2021 Social History Society Postgraduate Prize)

'‘The Women had Saved the Situation’: Indian Women’s Work in War and Famine', Royal Historical Society ‘Writing Race’ Blog Series 

Podcasts:

• Uncomfortable Oxford's Podcast Series 'A Very Brief Introduction to the British Empire: Conquest in Asia'
• The Polis Project Conversation Series ‘Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India: Urvi Khaitan in conversation with Mytheli Sreenivas’

Selected Presentations:

• ‘Inequality and Precarity in Global Perspective: Rethinking Social Polarisation in the UK, Japan, and the Global South’, World Economic History Congress, Paris, 29 July
• Economic and Social History Research Seminar joint with History of Gender and Sexuality Seminar, University of Edinburgh, 11 May 2022
• ‘New Directions in the History of War and Violence’ Seminar, Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War, King’s College London, 4 May 2022
• Annual Conference on South Asia, ‘In Famine and War: ‘Small Voices’ from South Asia’ panel, 23 October 2021
• PhD Student Workshop, International Conference on Indian Business & Economic History, IIM Ahmedabad, 24 August 2021
• Second World War Research Group Global Seminar, ‘Marginalised Histories of the Second World War’, 1 June 2021
• Tufts South Asian Regional Committee Panel, ‘Gendered Bodies, Trafficking, and Labour in South Asia’, 26 April 2021 (YouTube)
• British Library South Asia Seminar, 1 March 2021 (YouTube)
• History of the Gendered Body Seminar, University of Oxford, 13 November 2020
• Women’s History Network Seminar, 7 October 2020
• Harvard Graduate Student Conference on Global and International History, 1 August 2020
• ‘Comparing the Copperbelt’ ESRC Project—Oxford University Workshop ‘Extractive Industries and the Environment: Production, Pollution and Protest from a Global and Historical Perspective’, 6 – 7 December 2019
• Colonial Ports and Global History Network Workshop ‘Decolonising Colonial Ports and Global History: Rethinking Archives of Power’, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, 9 November 2019
• London School of Economics Annual Economic History of South Asia Workshop, 20 - 21 May 2019
• Oxford Economic and Social History Graduate Seminar, 6 February 2019

Supervisor: Dr Yasmin Khan