Dr Mirna Guha

Mirna is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Course Director for ARU's BA Sociology degree, and Race Equality Lead for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. She is a political sociologist who researches everyday experiences of gender violence and social (in)justice within marginalised communities globally. Her teaching specialisms include feminist theory, social inequalities, and discourses and interventions on gender and development.

[email protected]

Background

Dr Mirna Guha’s interdisciplinary research and teaching specialisms encompass topics across sociology, criminology, development studies, and public health. Specifically, she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate modules on decolonising sociology, sexual and gender-based violence, and global inequalities, and supervises doctoral projects on similar topics.

Mirna has a PhD in International Development from the University of East Anglia. Her doctoral research, which she has published in high-ranking and reputed academic journals like Gender, Place and Culture, Contemporary South Asia, and open access practitioner-focused journals like Gender and Development, focuses on everyday violence and resistance in the lives of marginalised women who sell sex in urban India. She is the lead editor on a Special Section titled “Contestations and contradictions: feminist research on structures and institutions governing sex work in India” for Contemporary South Asia and has co-edited a Special Issue on “The Future of Teaching Gender and Development” for Development in Practice. Prior to joining ARU, Mirna worked at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, analysing the counter-terrorism experiences of ethnic minority communities in the UK.

Currently, Mirna is leading externally funded research on investigating the impact of the leadership of Black and racialised women on domestic abuse service provision in East England. This project, funded by a Medical Research Council Grant Ref: MR/V049879/ includes a collaboration with the Institute for Social Justice and Crime, University of Suffolk, and specialist services focusing on the domestic abuse vulnerabilities of Asian women across Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire. This research aims to address gaps in ‘led by and for’ services around domestic abuse in the East of England by fostering the leadership of Black and racialised women who work directly with survivors and creating a body of evidence to highlight the impact of burgeoning specialist services. The project builds on an ARU funded pilot research, findings from which have been featured in Cambridgeshire Live and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. Mirna was invited to share her research at the Cambridge City Council Domestic Abuse conference in November 2022-23 and commissioned to create awareness materials for 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women and Girls which feature on the website of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence Partnership. Mirna has also spoken at the Women’s Parliament chaired by Hon. Dr Jocelyn Scutt held at Cambridge Guildhall on violence against women and economic independence as part of a national campaign for a Women’s Bill of Rights.

Mirna is an External Examiner for the BA Sociology programme at Oxford Brookes University and Visiting Senior (Research) Fellow in Gendered Violence and Social Justice at the Institute for Social Justice and Crime, University of Suffolk. Outside of academia, Mirna is leading the impact evaluation of a Home Office funded specialist intervention for South Asian survivors of domestic abuse at Peterborough Women’s Aid. In Cambridgeshire, Mirna has designed and delivered bespoke training on diversifying public services and transforming organisational culture to ensure inclusivity and welcomes invitations for collaborations with statutory and voluntary agencies to expand on this work.

Spoken Languages

• English
• Bengali
• Hindi

Research interests

• Gender Based Violence
• Gender Relations
• Social Inequalities
• Gender and Development
• Impact Evaluation

Areas of research supervision

• Gender Based Violence
• Gender Relations
• Social Inequalities
• Gender and Development
• Impact Evaluation

Current PhD supervisions as second supervisor:

• Gender based violence in the lives of street children in Nigeria
• Social Inclusion of EAL pupils within schools and classrooms in England

Teaching

In the MA Sociology programme, Mirna leads ‘Contemporary Debates in Sociology’ and ‘Global Development: Policy and Practice'.

Within BA Sociology, she leads ‘Global Affairs’ and ‘Global Feminisms’.

Qualifications

• PhD, International Development. University of East Anglia – fully funded by the Postgraduate Internationalisation Studentship awarded by the Faculty of Social Science (SSF), UEA.
• MA, Gender and International Development. University of Warwick - fully funded by the Commonwealth Shared Scholarship
• MA, English, Jadavpur University, India
• BA, English (Hons), Jadavpur University, India

Memberships, editorial boards

• Co-Convenor. Women and Development Study Group, Development Studies Association
• Co-editor. Development in Practice. Special Issue: Future of Teaching Gender and Development (under preparation)
• Co-editor. Contemporary South Asia. Special section on Sex work in India (under preparation)
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA)
• Member, Development Studies Association
• Member, British Sociological Association
• Member, Sex Work Research Hub
• Member, European Network on Gender Violence

Research grants, consultancy, knowledge exchange

• Principal Investigator. Medical Research Council Grant Ref: MR/V049879/ 'Nothing about us without us’: Investigating the impact of the leadership of ethnic minority women on domestic abuse service provision in East England. Award amount: £24972.11. June 2024-May 2025. In collaboration with Dr Katherine Allen, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Justice and Crime.
• January 2021-Present. Principal Investigator. ‘We Simply Don’t Know Enough: Investigating the vulnerabilities of Asian women around domestic abuse in East England. Grant amount: £25,595 (funded under the Safe and Inclusive Communities theme, and by the AHSS Research and Innovation fund, Anglia Ruskin University).
• Jan 2019 – March 2020. Co-Investigator: Gender inequalities and informal urban housing in India. PI: Dr Henrike Donner. £34,000. Funded by GCRF, Goldsmiths, University of London.
• November 2022. Consultant, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence Partnership Manager. Awareness posters on Asian women and Domestic Abuse for 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women.

Selected recent publications

Journal articles

Guha, M., 2024. Everyday violence and care: insights from fictive kin relations between madams and sex workers in India. Contemporary South Asia, 32(2), pp.242-257. DOI:10.1080/09584935.2024.2340590

Guha, M., & Walters, K. (2024). Contestations and contradictions: feminist research on structures and institutions governing sex work in India. Contemporary South Asia, 32(2), 202–208. DOI:10.1080/09584935.2024.2344782

Gordon, R., Guha, M., & Nandagiri, R. (2024). Introduction: the future of teaching gender and development. Development in Practice, 34(7), 825–833. DOI:10.1080/09614524.2024.2395493

Guha, Mirna., 2019. ''Safe spaces' and 'bad' girls: 'child marriage victims' experiences from a shelter in Eastern India, Gender, Place & Culture', 26:1, 128-144, DOI:10.1080/0966369X.2019.1574720

Guha, M., 2019. ‘Do you really want to hear about my life?’: doing ‘feminist research’with women in sex work in Eastern India. Gender & Development, 27(3), pp.505-521. DOI:10.1080/13552074.2019.1664045

Guha, Mirna (2018). 'Disrupting the 'life-cycle' of violence in social relations: recommendations for anti-trafficking interventions from an analysis of pathways out of sex work for women in Eastern India', Gender & Development, 26:1, 53-69,DOI: 10.1080/13552074.2018.1429098. Open access version.

Guha, M., 2018. Sartorially weaving their way through bhodrota (respectability): Georgette sarees, bangles and selling sex in a Kolkata neighbourhood. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 5(2), pp.399-405. DOI: 10.1386/infs.5.2.399_7

Book chapter

Guha, M., 2020. '"I entered this life because my husband left me, I have to be careful now": A study of domesticity, intimacy and belonging in the lives of women in sex work in a red-light area in Eastern India’ in J. Carter and L. Arocha (eds.) Romantic relationships in a time of cold intimacies. London: Palgrave.

Blog

Guha, Mirna. 2019. ‘Dynamic Lives, Dynamic Identities: Representing Agency and Victimhood Within the Lives of Women in Sex Work’. The Sociological Review, Politics of Representation collection.

Podcast

‘What does feminist research really look like?’ Gender and Development, OXFAM.

Recent presentations and conferences

Invited Speaker. Violence against Women in South Asian communities. Violence Against Women and Girls Research Network (UK) webinar. 8 February 2022.

Invited speaker. Everyday violence against marginalised women in England and India: A comparison. Symbiosis University (India) and University of Pune (India). January 2023.

Invited speaker. Women’s Bill of Rights, Women’s Parliament UK. “Violence Against Ethnic Minority Women in England”. Cambridge Guildhall. 8 December 2022.

Invited speaker. “We simply don’t know enough: Investigating the vulnerabilities of Asian women around Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse Conference, Cambridge City Council. 18th November 2022.

Invited speaker. Decolonising sexual health globally. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 8 March 2023 (scheduled).

Paper presentation. Sociological research in action: Facilitating knowledge exchange on vulnerabilities of Asian women around domestic abuse in East England. British Sociological Association Annual Conference. University of Manchester. 12-14 April 2023 (scheduled).

Media experience

Cambridgeshire Live, 23 September 2022. Asian women in Cambs facing domestic abuse feel ‘silenced' by their community, research finds.

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. 15 September 2022. Interview with Dotty McLeod on the Breakfast Show.