Antara Rai Chowdhury

Antara Rai Chowdhury is part of the Academics & Research team at IIHS where she contributes to research and research management for various institutional projects. She also teaches at the Urban Fellows Programme.

A graduate of economics and development studies, she is interested in contributing to the understanding of the forces which (re)produce inequality, especially at the intersection of labor and women’s lives. Her work primarily engages with labour, cross-cutting with themes of migration, informal work, care work, social security, climate adaptation, and planning. The variety of work at IIHS is an opportunity to explore research methods in social science, operations in action projects, and learning about policy and development landscape.

She is currently working on projects that elucidate various aspects of women’s lives in the informal labour market: strategies and impact of mobilisation and unionisation, use and impact of digital platforms, linkages to formal social security and labour rights, child-care and creche models, employer orientation, and demand for labour in domestic work among others.

She has previously worked with CARIAA-ASSAR research team looking at natural and socio-economic transitions in peri-urban areas of Bengaluru and how they shape differential vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Here she contributed to the investigations of livelihood transition and diversification, and gendered impact of it.

Before joining IIHS, her master thesis was exploring the narratives of migrant women negotiating entry into the labour market from informal settlements in proximity to industrial areas of Delhi. It was a part of a larger study consortium ‘SHRAMIC’ supported by Tata Trusts, looking at identities and livelihood strategies of of workers engaged in industrial work.