Vani Kulkarni

Vani Kulkarni's picture
Senior Fellow, Urban Ethnography Project (UEP)
Areas of Interest: 
Health; Education; Global and Transnational Processes; Gender, Race and Caste; Development and Democracy.
Address: 
204 Prospect Street, Room No. 206
Phone number: 
203.432.3216
Email: 
vani.kulkarni@yale.edu
Vita: 
https://sociology.yale.edu/sites/default/files/vani-cv-2013.pdf

Vani S. Kulkarni is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Urban Ethnography Project at Yale University. She has a PhD, with distinction, from the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught and been awarded several research fellowships at Penn, Harvard and Yale. She has also worked as a consultant to the United Nations.

Her research interests include: Sociology of Health; Global and Transnational Sociology; Gender; Development; Democracy; Sociology of Race and Caste; and Sociology of Education.

Her work has a comparative perspective centered in South Asia and North America. Her primary methodological approach has been ethnographic and, therefore, qualitative, but for her work in the sociology of development, she blends it with quantitatively expressed trends in global development.

She has published in the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Journal of International Affairs, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Contemporary South Asia, Brown Journal of World Affairs, and Oxford Companion to Medical & Health Geography. She has coauthored a book titled, Diets, Malnutrition and Disease in India, Oxford University Press, forthcoming, and has an edited symposium in the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science entitled, Bringing Fieldwork Back In: Contemporary Urban Ethnography. Her writings have also appeared as an encyclopedia entry in Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, two chapters in the Handbook on Food: Demand, Supply, Sustainability and Security (Edward Elgar, forthcoming), and in Handbook on Food: Economics, Society and Politics (Oxford University Press, New York, forthcoming), in policy reports for The United Nations, and in opinion pieces for leading Indian newspapers, including The Hindu, The Indian Express and the Economic Times.

She has taught both undergraduate and graduate level courses at Penn, Harvard and Yale. The courses she has taught include: Introduction to Sociology, Medical Sociology, International and Global Health, Gender and Health in South Asia, Qualitative Methods in Health, Health Inequality in India, and Social Capital & Democracy.

Her current research projects include: (1) Global Development and the Sociology of Silence (2), Gender and Global Health (3) Gender and Democracy (4) Race and Caste Inequality (4) Sociology of Charter Schools in the US, and  (5) Sociology of Suicide.

 

 

Selected Recent Publications:

 

Books:

  • 2012. July (Edited Volume): “Bringing Fieldwork Back In: Contemporary Urban Ethnography,” special edition of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. (with Elijah Anderson; Duke Austin, Dana Asbury and Esther Kim)
  • Forthcoming. Diets, Malnutrition and Disease in India, Oxford University Press.

Articles:

  • Forthcoming. Invited Contribution. “Global and the Local: Case of Migrant Remittances in India”, in M. Rahman Migrant Remittances in South Asia, Edited. Palgrave Macmillan
  • Forthcoming. Invited Contribution. “Globalization of the Middle Class: Case of Dietary Consumption Pattern”, in Raghbendra Jha, Raghav Gaiha and Anil Deoloalikar. Edited. Handbook of Food: Demand, Supply, Sustainability and Security, Edward Elgar.
  • 2013. “How Pervasive is Eating Out in India?” Journal of Asian & African Studies, 48(3) 370–386 (with R. Jha and R.Gaiha).
  • 2012. “The Making and Unmaking of Local Democracy in an Indian Village”, in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. July.
  • 2012. “The Legacy of Racial Caste,” in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. (with Anderson, Elijah, Duke W. Austin, and Craig Holloway). July.
  • 2012. “Maternal Mortality” Entry in Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: An Encyclopedia, Editors Edward Ramsamy, Andrea L. Stanton, Peter J. Seybolt, and Carolyn Elliott. Sage Publications Volume 4. Pp. 245-248.
  • 2010: “Social Perspective on Health Inequalities: A Re-conceptualization”, (with S.V. Subramanian) in Brown, T., McLafferty, S. & Moon, Graham (Editors) A Companion to Health and Medical Geography. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Newspaper/Newsletter:

  • 2013. OpEd. “Where Have All the Women Gone?” (on missing women),  The Hindu, August 20.
  • 2013. Opinion & Analysis Piece. “Explaining the Prevalence of Rape in Delhi NCR”, Global Review, (American Sociological Association’s Global and Transnational Sociology Newsletter). Volume 3, Issue 3, Summer. (with Kristin Plys).
  • 2013. OpEd. “A Case of Misplaced Euphoria” (discussion of accomplishment of a key Millennium Development Goal (MDG) — of halving extreme poverty in the developing world — five years ahead of the 2015 deadline). The Hindu, June 15. (with R. Gaiha).
  • 2013. OpEd. “Four Walls and the Cry for Help” (on prevalence of Domestic Violence) The Hindu, May 22 (with M.Pandey and R. Gaiha).
  • 2010. Analysis Piece. “Dietary Transition in India” (Invited Contribution) Online Publication, India in Transition, The Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania. (with R. Gaiha).