Urvi Khaitan

Women, War, and Work: Experiences of World War II in Colonial South Asia

I am a DPhil student in Economic and Social History, and my work primarily focuses on gender and labour in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Asia. My DPhil aims to examine how gender, class, and empire defined working women's experiences in the South Asian economy during World War II. My research aims to show South Asian women as actors and agents in a historical period that has marginalized them, to de-masculinize war, and to add to the literature globalizing the Second World War. 

I completed an MPhil in Economic and Social History at the University of Oxford, where I wrote my dissertation on women coal miners in the colonial state in India in the 1920s-1940s, and hold an undergraduate degree in History from St. Stephen's College, Delhi. 

My research is supported by an Oxford Graduate Scholarship. 

Supervisor: Dr Yasmin Khan