Dr Rebecca Bowers

Rebecca Bowers is a feminist economic anthropologist whose research interests include gendered and inter-generational experiences of inequality, financialisaton, labour informality and labour organisation.

Rebecca has undertaken fieldwork in India between 2014-2017 and more recently, digital ethnography in London during the outbreak of Covid-19. Her doctoral thesis, Gendered Economies of Extraction, explored how real estate speculation shapes intersecting forms of inequality for migrant female construction workers in Bengaluru (‘India’s Silicon Valley’) and how women work on familial projects of permanence to counter precarious urban employment and residence.

Following completion of her PhD, Rebecca has taught Economic Anthropology and Professional Development at LSE, while responding through research to the urgency of rising inequalities during the pandemic. This has entailed simultaneous work on two projects undertaking qualitative research on the effects of government responses on vulnerable populations in the UK and India.

Rebecca is a member of the Covid and Care research group at LSE, which has worked with community organisations, advice giving agencies, and citizen scientists, to illuminate the vital role played by the household and often informal networks of care during the pandemic. The group's findings place households and care networks at the centre of policy proposals for interlinking social and economic recovery. Alongside her teaching duties, Rebecca is currently writing several articles and plans to produce a monograph of her work.

Expertise

Gender, Informal labour, The household, Inequality, Precarity; Covid-19; Labour migration; Pragmatism