Dr Sunrita Dhar-Bhattacharjee

Sunrita is an Associate Professor in Human Resource and Organisational Behaviour within the School of Management at ARU. Prior to this she was the Deputy Head of School.

sunrita.dhar-bhattacharjee@aru.ac.uk

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Background

Prior to joining ARU, Sunrita was working at the Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University. Her last research project was on ICT offshoring from Sweden to India, examining the gendered constructions and conditions in ICT offshoring, and exploring the barriers to collaborative working.

While working as a Research Fellow in the School of Built Environment at Salford University, Sunrita worked on various consultancy works with the North West Development Agency (NWDA) - the equality and diversity guidance note on sustainable buildings and checklist of key performance indicators on accessibility, community engagement, workforce under-representation and work and training initiatives. Sunrita has been working with Construction Skills on the Women and Work: Sector Pathways Initiative (which received the 'Best Training Scheme Award' at the National Women in Construction Awards, March 2010) in the UK.

Sunrita has experience of facilitating innovation and learning in businesses, principally through collaborative working groups and action learning sets. She developed positive training initiatives and in-house equality and diversity and corporate social responsibility policies and training for small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in North West England and learning development programmes to assist in the development of the workforce.

Sunrita's research interests include gender studies in education, organisations and the future of work. Her interests include comparative research across two or more countries with regards to gender and the labour market. The research themes that she is developing link theoretical concepts from gender and technology literature with theoretical aspects of international business literature, with regards to the intersectional perspectives in the study of transnational organisations in advanced and emerging economies.

Her two current QR_GCRF funded research projects are on gender and access to education and gender equity and access to energy in the global south.

Research interests

• Gender and education
• Gender equity and energy access
• Women and work
• Gender segregation in the labour market
• Virtual work and Offshoring
• Transnational organisations and knowledge transfer
• Strategic HR and sustainability in organisations

Areas of research supervision

• Gender segregation in the labour market
• Virtual work and Offshoring
• Transnational organisations and knowledge transfer
• Strategic HR and sustainability in organisations

Teaching

• Developing Professional Practice using Information in HR
• HRM and Improving Organisational Performance
• Contemporary issues in HRM
• Research Methods

Qualifications

• 2016 Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy
• 2013 PGCert in Teaching and Learning, Anglia Ruskin University
• 2013 PhD: Gender segregation in IT – a comparative study with UK and India, Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University
• 2005 PG Cert Project Management, Open University, UK
• 1999 Masters in International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
• 1997 Bachelor in Political Science (Honours), Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

Memberships, editorial boards

• Academic member of the CIPD MCIPD
• External Panellist, Athena Swan
• Member of editorial board, International Journal of e-Politics

Research grants, consultancy, knowledge exchange

Current QR-GCRF research projects (Sept 2020 - ) which addresses the Sustainable Development Goals 3, 4 and 7

• Gendered impacts on access to education and technology during COVID-19 in India - £10,000 as Principal Investigator
• Gendering the construction of energy needs in the Global South - £70 as Co-Principal Investigator

Selected recent publications

Journals

Sunrita Dhar-Bhattacharjee, Helen Richardson, (2018) 'A tour of India in one workplace: investigating complex and gendered relations in IT', Information Technology & People, Vol. 31 Issue: 2, pp.578-594.

Blomqvist, M., Peterson, H. and Dhar-Bhattacharjee, S., (2015). You Feel The Threat From Asia: Onshore Experiences of IT Offshoring To India. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 5(4), p.41.

Dhar-Bhattacharjee, S., & Takruri-Rizk, H. (2011). Gender segregation and ICT: An Indo-British comparison. International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP), Vol 2, No 1, Page 45-67, Jan -March 2011.

Book chapter

Dhar-Bhattacharjee, S. (forthcoming). Women's activism: lack and consequences in the Indian IT sector' in Women, Activism and Politics in India. Co-edited by Anjoo Sharon Upadhayav and Ulf Melstrom, Routledge.

Salminen-Karlsson, M., and Peterson, H. and Dhar-Bhattacharjee, S. (2016). Ideal Employees in Transnational ICT Companies. Book chapter published by Springer, 2016 in ‘Gender in transnational knowledge companies’.

Dhar-Bhattacharjee, S., & Takruri-Rizk, H. (2011). Gender segregation and ICT: An Indo-British comparison, Celia Romm Livermore (Eds.), Gender and Social Computing: Interactions, Differences, and Relationships (pp 50-71). IGI Global Publishing. 

Takruri-Rizk, H, Sappleton, N and Dhar-Bhattacharjee, S (2010). Progression of UK women engineers: Aids and Hurdles, Carter-Steel, A. and Carter E (Eds.), Women in engineering, science and technology: Education and career challenges (pp 280-300). IGI Global Publishing.

Consultancy papers

Dhar-Bhattacharjee, S., (2010), Total Place – pooling public money: a discussion paper, CCI, June 2010.

Dhar-Bhattacharjee, S and Worrall, L. (2009), 'Equality and Diversity Guidance Framework for Procurement', for: NWDA, Manchester, England.  June 2009

Conference papers

Dhar-Bhattacharjee, S. (2018). Gender segregation and integration in IT: comparative study with India and the UK. 10th Biennial Gender, Work & Organisation Conference, Sydney, June 13-16th 2018.

Dhar-Bhattacharjee, S. (2017). Is Work-life balance a baloney? Paper presented at the Conference on, ‘GENDER, ACTIVISM AND POLITICS IN INDIA & SWEDEN’ at Malaviya Centre for Peace Research and the UNESCO Chair for Peace and Intercultural Understanding, Banaras Hindu University, in collaboration with the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Karlstad University, Sweden.2-4th April 2017.