OFFICE HOURS CONTACT INSTRUCTIONS
Please email (rai@pdx.edu) to arrange a time to meet in person, online, or over the phone.
RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS
Human Geography: Global Development, Labor, Migration, Gender (masculinities, sexualities), Climate & Agro-ecological Change, Social transformations (identities, castes, social movements), South Asia, Oregon
RESEARCH AGENDA
My current research is focused on 1) the intersecting relations between agro-ecological and climate change, social change and identity politics, and rural labor negotiations in western India; 2) how climate change is exacerbating population health challenges in the hierarchized rural agrarian society in western India [in collaboration with Sameer Shah and Celina Balderas Guzmán at the University of Washington (UW)]; and 3) the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on underlying social vulnerabilities of the immigrant communities in the urban American Pacific
Northwest (PNW) (in collaboration with Alex Stepick and Alex Sager at Portland State.) My ongoing scholarship is being supported by the UW and Portland State. Additionally, I am collaborating with colleagues at Washington State University to study climate migration drivers and impacts with a focus on the PNW and with colleagues at Portland State on an educational research project to explain the mechanics of data-informed undergraduate curricular reforms.
Previously, I have examined labor migration in rural western India to study the seasonal migration of socio-politically and economically marginalized agrarian populations and social change in migrant home villages. I have published this research in Social and Cultural Geography, Environment and Planning A; Gender, Place and Culture and Geoforum. This work has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I have also studied the politics of food-based entitlements in rural western India to explain the distribution of endowments among various rural communities and food-based entitlements as biopolitics that embroils populations occupying multiple social locations and variegated relations with the development state. I co-published this research (along with Tom Smucker at Ohio University) in the Journal of Rural Studies, and my project was supported by Ohio University and the Friends of India Endowment Trust in Athens, OH.
COURSES TAUGHT
- GEOG 407/507: Climate and Society
- GEOG/INTL 370U: Global Migration
- INTL/WS 349U: Gender and International Development
- GEOG/INTL 325U: Contemporary India
- INTL 204: Global Studies Perspectives (no longer actively teaching)
- INTL 201: Introduction to International Studies (no longer actively teaching)