Dr Sharmila Parmanand

Dr Sharmila Parmanand is Assistant Professor in Gender, Development and Globalisation and Associate Academic at the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, co-convenor of the Development Studies Association Gender and Development Study Group, and editorial board member of the Anti-Trafficking Review.

Her first area of research explores the colonial histories, gendered logics, and contemporary power relations that underpin development and humanitarian interventions. She focuses on governance structures and knowledge practices in the contexts of migration, gender-based violence, precarious and informal labour, and social protection programmes.

She is working on her first book, Rescuing Sex Work from Anti-Trafficking: Rewriting the Philippines' Anti-Trafficking Success Story. Her other current work within this research strand examines migrant sex work and trafficking across different national contexts, technological approaches to modern slavery, and critical feminist approaches to human rights and gender justice. She is part of a nine-country research project on migrant sex work and trafficking funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). With early career seed funding from the British Academy, she is working with Dr Pankhuri Agarwal on a multi-method analysis of policy and public narratives on technology as a solution to modern slavery. She is also co-editing three special journal issues: Imagining an Alternative Politics of Human Rights for the International Journal of Human Rights with Dr Hasret Cetinkaya, Gender Justice in Troubled Times for Development in Practice with Dr Mirna Guha and Dr Reetika Subramanian, and Creative Confrontations: Centering Trans-Asian Sex Work Activism for Porn Studies with Dr Eunbi Lee.

Her second area of research examines the political uses of gender in populist and illiberal politics. With generous support from the Hong Kong General Research Fund, she is working with Professor Mark Thompson to investigate the relationships between gender and illiberalism in Asia. She is also part of a research team funded by the Australian National University’s Philippines Institute to develop a gendered analysis of the Duterte dynasty’s political appeal. She has studied the connections between masculinity, nationalism, and populism in the context of former Philippine President Duterte’s war on drugs and several world leaders’ responses to the pandemic. Her work in this field examines how moral politics and moral panics acquire political force in developmentalist contexts, and how securitisation emerges as a response to social problems.

Prior to joining LSE, she was a lecturer at the University of Vermont Department of Theater, University of the Philippines-Diliman Department of Women and Development Studies, and Ateneo de Manila University Department of English and Literature, and supervised courses on gender and politics and comparative Southeast Asian politics at the University of Cambridge.

Dr Parmanand also regularly engages with policymakers, practitioners, activist communities, and media through invited talks, interviews, and discussions on her research.

Major Awards:

• ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (London School of Economics and Political Science, 2021-2022)
• Gates Cambridge PhD Scholarship (University of Cambridge, 2016-2020)
• Australian Leadership Award MA Scholarship (University of Melbourne, 2011-2012

Expertise

sex work; trafficking; migration; gender and development; gender and populism; feminist ethnography

Teaching

Programme director:

• MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation

Course convener:

• GI409 Conceptual Foundations in Gender, Development and Globalization
• GI432 Transnational perspectives on gender, borders and migration
• GI499 Dissertation - Independent Research Project

PhD supervision

Member of the Supervisory team for Ting-Sian Liu, Alice Bell and Chloe Vaast.