Dr Sidra Kamran is an Assistant Professor in Qualitative Methods in the Department of Methodology. She completed her PhD in Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies at The New School for Social Research in New York. Prior to joining LSE, she was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

Sidra uses ethnographic and interview methods to explore gender-class dynamics in spaces of work and leisure. Her interdisciplinary work draws on sociology, anthropology, feminist geography, media studies, and gender and sexuality studies.

Her current book project entitled Between Stigma and Status: Femininity, Labor, and Class in Pakistan’s Service Economy is an ethnographic study of women beauty salon workers and retail workers in Karachi, Pakistan. Her previously published and forthcoming research explores working-class women’s contradictory gender performances at work, narratives of “work passion” in low-status occupations, gender and public space, and women’s digital purdah (veiling) and sexuality on TikTok.

Publications

Kamran, Sidra. 2023. “The Thermometer Broke! Digital Purdah, Class, and Gender Transgressions on Pakistani TikTok.” Social Media + Society 9(2):20563051231182360. doi: 10.1177/20563051231182359.

Kamran, Sidra. 2022. “Experiencing the City as Workers: The Spatial Practices of Beauty and Retail Workers in Pakistan.” Sociology of South Asia: Postcolonial Legacies, Global Imaginaries. Eds. Smitha Radhakrishnan and Gowri Vijayakumar. Palgrave Macmillan.

Kamran, Sidra. 2021. “A Patchwork of Femininities: Working-Class Women’s Fluctuating Gender Performances in a Pakistani Market.” Gender & Society. 35(6):971–94.

Book Review

Kamran, Sidra. 2024. “The Stigma Matrix: Gender, Globalization, and the
Agency of Pakistan’s Frontline Women.” The Journal of Development Studies 1–2.

Blog

Gender Performances in the Context of Class Stratification. Gender & Society blog. https://gendersociety.wordpress.com/2021/10/25/good-and-bad-women-gender-performance-in-the-context-of-class-stratification/