Henrike Donner

Biography

Dr Henrike Donner is an urban anthropologist with research interests in gender and kinship, class and urban politics. Her research projects explore the interplay of gender, kinship and class, the legacy of the militant Naxalite movement and the multiple effects of urban change on social relations. She has conducted fieldwork in Kolkata, India from the mid-90s onwards and have published extensively on changing family life, inter-generational relations, the reproduction of class, urban politics and consumption. Dr Henrike Donner convenes the BA Anthropology and Media programme. She teaches the following courses: Politics, Economics and Social Change Introduction to Social Anthroplogy Anthropological Research Methods

Research Interest

Henrike Donner's research interests include changing family life, gender relations, and urban politics in relation to middle-class identity, and she has conducted fieldwork in Kolkata, India from the 1990s onwards. Earlier projects she was involved in focused on middle-class families, parenting and reproductive change, within the context of economic liberalization and the life histories of former political activists in the 1970s Naxalite movement. She also has always had an interest in urban space, first working on gender, neighbourhoods and place-making and more recently on urban property and class relations. Urban property regimes are the focus of he current research project, which explores the way the lives of middle-class lifestyles are shaping urban politics, and how in return, intimate relations are re-ordered and re-imagined through neoliberal discourses on homeownership, possessive individualism, and ongoing urban restructuring.