For over 40 years, Professor Patricia Jeffery, Professor Emerita in Sociology, University of Edinburgh, carried out pioneering research, individually and in partnership with her colleagues. The range of subjects she covered includes gender and development, especially childbearing, women’s reproductive rights, social demography in South Asia, Indian society, gender and communal politics, education and the reproduction of inequality; race and ethnicity. Her books, including Frogs in a Well: Indian Women in Purdah (1979) and Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism, Politicized Religion and the State in South Asia (edited with Amrita Basu, 1998) inspired peers and future scholars alike. In this volume, we bring together a range of new research that is inspired by and intersects with Professor Jeffery’s work. The chapters offer new data, refreshing insights and original analysis on subjects of contemporary importance in the fields of gender, health, marginalization and development.

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SHRUTI CHAUDHRY is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral research was completed at Edinburgh Sociology and was supervised by Patricia Jeffery. Her research focuses on migration, family and intimate relationships, ageing and the life course, social change, gender and intersecting inequalities explored in the context of India and the South Asian diasporas in Scotland. She is the author of Moving for Marriage: Inequalities, Intimacy and Women’s Lives in Rural North India (2021), a comparative ethnographic study of women who migrate for marriage, regionally and cross-regionally, to become brides in western Uttar Pradesh.

HUGO GORRINGE is a senior lecturer in Sociology and former co-director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His first academic post was as a replacement lecturer to Patricia Jeffery. His research interests focus on Dalit movements and politics in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He is the author of Untouchable Citizens (2005) and Panthers in Parliament (2017) which address the rise of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) and their entry into politics. He has co-edited a number of volumes including From the Margins to the Mainstream (2016, with Suryakant Waghmore and Roger Jeffery), Civility in Crisis (2020, with Suryakant Waghmore) and Caste in Everyday Life (2023, with Dhaneswar Bhoi). He has also written numerous articles on caste, violence and politics.

RADHIKA GOVINDA is a senior lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh and the Director of GENDER.ED – the university’s interdisciplinary hub for gender and sexualities studies. She convenes Gender and Development – a postgraduate course that Patricia Jeffery designed and convened for many years. Her research focuses on the gender politics of development, intersecting inequalities and feminist knowledge production. She has co-edited Doing Feminisms in the Academy in India and the UK (Zubaan 2021, with Fiona Mackay, Krishna Menon and Rukmini Sen). She has also published a number of articles on gender, caste, masculinities, feminist activism and development in India.