Staff Profiles

Modules taught

I have designed, teach and lead two modules for MA Development and Emergency Practice, CENDEP:

Critical inquiry in development and emergency practice: theory and policy

Disasters, risks, vulnerability and climate change

The key thematic areas of my research interest and experience are: Rights, social inclusion and resilience building with age, disability, gender, displaced people and other identities as intersecting themes in the contexts of protracted and humanitarian crisis, and disasters.  

My research is applied, inter-disciplinary and crosses boundaries between development studies, geography, gender studies, law and built environment. My current research projects and publications include new contributions on gender, age and disability sensitive humanitarian practices, rights of displaced people, furthering social equity, disaster risk reduction and resilience building practices with a focus on global south, and in particular South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa.

The application of my research is to improve the operational practice of humanitarian and disaster response, risk reduction and resilience building with a focus on socially marginalised groups.  My past and current linkages with social action groups, International and National NGOs in the global south give me a good platform to disseminate my research findings, and advocate for changes in policies and practices.

Research interests and Expertise:

Enabling Social Inclusion: Gender, Age, Disability and marginalised identities in Development and humanitarian contexts

Human rights, emergencies and disasters with a focus on marginalised groups such as refugees, internally displaced people, migrants and urban poor 

Post- humanitarian crisis/disaster recovery and reconstruction work using comparative case studies or scenarios from different countries

Development-Humanitarian nexus and linkages  

Research group membership

Fellow, The Higher Education Academy, UK

Technical Working Group Member, Humanitarian Innovation Fund, ELRHA for Older people and People with Disabilities, UK

Member, Gender and Disaster Network

Member, UKADR (UK alliance for Disaster Research)

Research grants and awards

Brookes Research Excellence Award: Ageing in Displacement (PI for the project)

British Academy Award "The Contribution of Urban Community Gardens to Inclusive and Sustainable Local Environments" (CoI for the project)

DFID funded Age and Disability Capacity Project (PI for the project)

Books

• Akerkar S, Bhardwaj R, Good practice guide: embedding inclusion of older people and people with disabilities in humanitarian policy and practice, Age and Disability Capacity Programme / CENDEP, Oxford Brookes University (2018)
  ISBN: 9781910743331
  

Journal articles

• Akerkar S, 'Affirming radical equality in the context of Covid19: Human Rights of Older People and People with Disabilities'
  Journal of Human Rights Practice 12 (2) (2020) pp.276-283
  ISSN: 1757-9619 eISSN: 1757-9627
  Abstract

  This paper discusses the impact of COVID-19 on older people and people with disabilities. It draws attention to the violations of their human rights in the context of COVID-19 which in turn reveal the hierarchical social order of our society. Although statistics show higher deaths of older people in regard to COVID-19, these numbers co-exist with rampant discrimination towards these groups with underlying messaging that their lives are dispensable. The paper highlights violations at different levels—discursive, ethical, and everyday—and shows how they are underpinned by ageism and disablism which stereotype older people and people with disabilities with prejudicial messaging and actions by states and societal actors. At the same time, the paper also highlights the value of human rights discourses and instruments which are mobilized by the disability movement and groups upholding the rights of older people, to question these rights infringements in the context of COVID-19. The politics of these groups which call for principled equality and inclusion of older people and people with disabilities in times of COVID-19 exhibit a much-needed disruption of our social order, an undertaking that needs to be continued in COVID-19 times and after.
  

  Website 
• Akerkar S, Fordham M, 'Gender, place and mental health recovery in disasters: addressing issues of equality and difference'
  International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 23 (2017) pp.218-230
  ISSN: 2212-4209 eISSN: 2212-4209
  Abstract UK and wider EU governments follow gender neutral policies in their disaster planning and management based upon a misconception that the gender gap has been eliminated. Findings from our quantitative and qualitative research, carried out as a part of an EU Project, ‘MICRODIS’, in two flood affected locations in England (Tewkesbury floods of 2007, and Morpeth floods of 2008), challenges this notion, revealing that disasters can have paradoxically equal and yet differentiated gendered impacts. Our findings highlight some of the more subtle ways that disasters differentially impacted women and men. It shows that although the degree of mental health recovery of affected men and women was mostly equal, they mobilised different recovery strategies, mostly consistent with their traditional gendered norms and socially constructed roles. Women's recovery strategies were mainly aligned with emotional notions of care, while men's were with notions of control. These findings also show that gendered identities, home-neighbourhood place attachment, and mental wellbeing are related in complex ways. Temporary displacement from their home-neighbourhood places after floods were traumatic for both men and women, although there were perceptible differences in this experience. The paper concludes that gender difference in disasters is ubiquitous globally, and thus analyses must include a gender and diversity analysis and ask more probing gender questions, even in apparently gender equal societies, in order to uncover sometimes hidden impacts.Website 
• Akerkar S, Joshi, PC, Fordham M, 'Cultures of Entitlement and Social Protection: Evidence from Flood Prone Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, India'
  World Development 86 (2016) pp.46-58
  ISSN: 0305-750X
  Abstract Sen’s entitlement thesis rooted in social contract theory has been used to explain access to food, and is used by states to design social protection programs as transfer entitlements to diffuse food insecurities. Social protection programs have now burgeoned in several countries as a strategy to enable the poor to overcome risks, vulnerabilities and poverty. These social protection programs have inclusion and exclusion errors, which current theorization attributes mainly to political clientalism, social vulnerability, elite capture, targeting inefficiency, leakages and corruption, lack of information transparency and improper designing of social protection programs. This paper argues that the errors are due to a more fundamental assumption made in application of social contract and entitlement-based approach to social protection programing. It identifies an uncritical application of Sen’s entitlement thesis to social protection programs, as leading to inclusion and exclusion errors. The main problematic, the paper shows is that the social contract-led entitlement thesis works within the domain of formal rights situated within the state-citizen relations, and as such, misses out on the non-formal entitlements and non-state influences that impact materialization of social protection programs in practice. Evidences from flood prone Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, India indicate that non-state rules linked with clientele and patronage relations, moral and local political economies trump over formal rights to mediate social protection entitlement outcomes. Rather than abstract state-citizen social contract, it is the moral contracts of reciprocal exchanges with influential patrons embedded in the moral economy of the villages that ultimately ground the social protection entitlement claims of poor villagers. Conceptualizing this process of access as cultures of entitlement, the paper builds a framework for reinterpretation of entitlements and their outcomes, suggesting a recalibration of application of Sen’s entitlement thesis to social protection programs. In conclusion it argues that Sen’s entitlement thesis which is pitched at transfer of economic resources through social protection from the state to the poor is inadequate. Learning from social movements currently leading the transparency and accountability struggles in India, it calls for an instituting and recognition of accountability as new cultural resource and entitlement. In conclusion it argues that information, and accountability as new cultural entitlements, when mobilized through collective agency of the poor can potentially challenge the current cultures of entitlements evidenced in this paper that presently underlie social protection outcomes.Website 
• Akerkar S, 'Development of a normative framework for disaster relief: learning from colonial histories in India'
  Disasters 39 (S2) (2015) pp.219-243
  ISSN: 0361-3666 eISSN: 1467-7717
  Abstract
  Contemporary academic debates on the history of the colonial Famine Codes in India—also
  considered to be the first coded and institutionalised normative frameworks for natural disaster
  response on the continent—generally are based on one of two perspectives. The first focuses on their economic rationale, whereas the second underlines that they constitute an anti-famine contract between the colonial masters and the people of India. This paper demonstrates that both of these viewpoints are limited in scope and that they simplify the nature of governance instituted through famine response practices in Colonial India. It links this reality to current disaster response policies and practices in India and shows that the discussion on the development of normative frameworks underlying disaster response is far from over. The paper goes on to evaluate the development of normative frameworks for disaster response and recovery, which remain embroiled in the politics of governmentality that underlies their development.

Book chapters

• Akerkar A, Devavaram J, 'Understanding Rights Based Approach in Disasters: A case for affirming human dignity' in Collins A, Jones S, Manyena B, Jayawickrama J (ed.), Hazard, Risks and Disasters in Society, Elsevier (2015)
  ISBN: 9780123964519 eISBN: 9780123964748
  Abstract This chapter argues that a rights-based approach in disasters is committed to the reduction of social vulnerability and promotion of equity in society in its postdisaster responses. This in turn means going beyond the dominant framing of rights by the state or dominant groups in the society that may not respond fully to the experiences of rightslessness felt by the marginalized groups after a disaster. What is needed is the critical assessment of rights by such groups, also termed as subaltern groups, suggesting that, although marginalized, they also have a voice and perspective on disaster response that needs to be included. It is this critical assessment of rights by subaltern groups that could inform a nuanced rights-based approach in disasters. The chapter uses the case study of one such subaltern group, namely, the women widowed in the tsunami of December 2003 in Tamil Nadu, India, and their long journey to dignified recovery to exemplify this learning. It also shows that the attainment of social rights and affirmation of dignity and equity were important disaster recovery goals for these women. More generally, a rights-based approach demands working closely with the subaltern groups, listening closely to their critical assessment of rights, and working with them to exercise their agency to affirm their rights and dignity. This calls for a commitment by organizations to work on a sustained basis for longer periods of time after disasters.Website 

Other publications

• Akerkar S, 'Gender and Older People'
  

  Following the new opportunities provided by the UN Decade on Healthy Ageing (2021-2030) and the impending fourth review and appraisal of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, Programme on Ageing Unit (PAU), United Nation Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) has commissioned this background research paper on gender and older people. The aim of this research report is to advance a better understanding of the impact of gender norms and roles in old age and older persons, the intersections between gender and age to serve as a key background for sound policy advice on social policies that are relevant to the UN Member States. Undertaking an in-depth analysis on gender and older people, and examining relevant issues, challenges and areas that require further attention, the report provides concrete policy proposals of areas where member countries can benefit from adopting a gender lens in their work with older persons in different areas.
  

  (2022) Abstract

  A key finding of this research is that gender and ageing play a distinct role in the shaping of the lives and experiences of older women and men. Older women and men face ageism, namely prejudices, stereotyping and discriminating practices because they are older. The overarching medicalised public policy discourses of dependency, decline about older women and men needs to be strongly countered through positive representations about older women and men. Local epistemologies about ageing as a life course process need to be incorporated to develop grounded positive representations of older women and men. Public policies on ageing need to be a part of the wider social policy domains which address older women and men’s constraints in holistic ways and further opportunities to live a life that they value.

  More attention needs to be given to understanding lived realities of older women and men from diverse socio-cultural-economic contexts. There are lack of studies on experiences of older women and men particularly from the global south as compared to global north. Experiences of older LGBTQ persons are also not represented. More investments are needed in research and studies to close this gap in understanding.

  Developing intersectional gendered understanding of ageing needs sensitive methodologies that can capture the lived diverse experiences of older women and men over their life course. The research report proposes a new 'gendered ageing and life course perspective methodological framework' incorporating three analytical strands of: gender, diversity and life course; transition conjunctures and trajectories; and narratives to uncover gendered ageing as a life course process, and to uncover diverse lived realities of older women and men.

  Website 

Other select publications

Akerkar S (2022): Gender and Older People, published by Programme and Ageing Unit (PAU), United Nation Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), New York. See:  https://www.un.org/development/desa/ageing/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2022/03/Gender-and-Older-People-Supriya-AKERKAR.pdf

Fordham M, Gupta S with Akerkar, S and Scharf M (2011) Leading resilient development: grassroots women's priorities, practices and innovations, published by Groots International and UNDP; seehttp://huairou.org/leading-resilient-development

Akerkar Supriya (2007) Disaster Mitigation and furthering women's rights: Learning from the Tsunami; in Gender, Technology and Development; 11; see http://gtd.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/11/3/357

Akerkar Supriya (2005) Rights, development and democracy: a perspective from India, in Reinventing Development: Translating Rights-Based Approaches from Theory into Practice, Ed Gready, Paul, Ensor Jonathan,  ZED publications, UK and USA

Thomson K, Sundaray S, Akerkar S, Daniel U (2005) Bolangir to Hyderabad and the politics of poverty (co-authored) et al published by Action Aid International

Akerkar S (2001) Gender and participation, publication by Bridge, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK. see http://www.bridge.ids.ac.uk/reports/cep-part-rep.pdf

Research contributions to the Fifth Citizen's Report on the State of India's Environment, 1999 Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi

Akerkar Supriya (1997) "Feminist voices" in Journal Seminar,  New Delhi, Pg34-37

Akerkar Supriya (1997) Women, ecology and development, in Women's Link, Volume 46, No3, published by Social Action Trust, New Delhi

Akerkar Supriya (1995) "Theory and practice of women's movement in India : A discourse analysis", Working Paper Series No 193, Published by Institute of Social Studies , Hague, Netherlands, April 1995. The Paper is also published in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XXX, No 17, Pg WS 2-WS-23, April 1995. This can be downloaded from publishing.eur.nl/ir/repub/asset/18894/wp193.pdf

Conferences

Conference papers and presentations

• Panelist speaker, presented paper Tackling persistent exclusion of older people and people with disabilities in humanitarian responses: Towards the critical capacity building of humanitarian organisations, paper presented at the DWD-UKADR-DRG-UKCDR Conference 17th-19th July 2019; University of Northumbria, Newcastle, UK
• Invited Expert, UN DESA office organized expert group meeting on older people in emergencies, New York , 15-17 May, 2019; presented paper 'Mapping of existing normative frameworks and guidelines relevant to older people in conflict and disasters: Implications for policy and practice’; see https://www.un.org/development/desa/ageing/meetings-and-workshops-2/emergency-crises.html
• Panelist speaker onage anddisability inclusion in disasters for the session Root Causes: Social Inequality and vulnerability in Disaster, 8^th-11th July 2018, 43^rd Annual Conf Natural Hazards Centre, Boulder, Uni of Colorado
• Panelist speaker intersectionality of gender, disability, age in emergencies European Development Days, Brussels 6/6/2018
• Keynote Social inclusion (gender, age and disability) in disasters, University of Leicester, 26^th March, 2018
• Keynote Disability in Humanitarian Responses, 13^th March, 2018, organized by Human Rights Festival, OBU
• Presentation on ‘Challenges on making invisible visible: Age and Disability Inclusion in humanitarian responses’, 29^th June 2016, organized by CENDEP,  Oxford Brookes University, in Oxford
• Presentation on ‘Mainstreaming gender, age and disability in humanitarian response’ in Conference organised by UCL, London and Tohoku University, Japan on 23^rd October 2015 in London
• Presentation on “Gender mainstreaming of early warning information during disasters: learning from best practices” to the Serbian Ministry on Environment and Agriculture in Belgrade on 28^th May 2015, on invitation by OSCE (EU led Organisation for security and cooperation in Europe) mission to Serbia.
• Presentation on ‘Trust, emergent learning and building of communities of practice: Learning from Drought and DRR’at the 3rd world conference in Sendai Japan, in parallel conference session hosted by University of Leicester and Kansai University, 16^th March 2015
• Conference session on ‘best practices in gender mainstreaming in disaster response’, in Manila, Philippines 24^th-25^th November,2014 on invitation by Wilton Park (foreign office of Government of UK), organised by Wilton Park and ADPC
• Presentation on ‘Disasters, vulnerability reduction and rights’ for the conference “Human rights in Asia”, organised by University of Essex, UK, 31^st May 2012
• Presentation on ‘Disaster Cultures and Human Rights in India’ in the Dealing with Disasters    conference co-organised by Northumbria University, Glamorgan University and Sunderland University on 23^rd-24th November 2010 held at Newcastle.
• Presentation on “local entitlements, reciprocity and disaster recovery” in the Asian MICRODIS conference organised at Hue, Vietnam by the Hue University on 25th-27th August 2010.
• Presentation on “social impacts of Tewekesbury floods”, in the conference organised by the National Flood Forum, UK in Birmingham on 25 February 2010
• Invited discussant  on Gender and Climate Change in the conference organised by the Institute of Development Studies, UK in June 2007