Kalpana Karunakaran is Associate Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department, IIT Madras (https://hss.iitm.ac.in/team-members/kalpana-k/). Her research lies in the domain of gender and development and, more broadly, Women’s Studies. Her published papers are in the intersecting fields of gender, labour, microcredit (Self Help Groups), women’s work in the informal sector, women’s trade unions and collective action in solidarity-based movements. Her book ‘Women, Microfinance and the State in Neo-liberal India’ was published by Routledge in 2017. She was a member of the National Executive Committee of the Indian Association for Women’s Studies (IAWS) (https://iaws.co.in/) from 2014 to 2017 and will serve again from 2024.

A bilingual public speaker and writer in Tamil and English, Kalpana conducts workshops and participates actively in campaigns for gender equality, labour rights and human rights organized by women’s movements, trade unions and rural development NGOs in Tamil Nadu. She also writes on women’s lives with a focus on the intersections between the personal and the political. Her Tamil book, a memoir, ‘Comrade Amma: Magal Parvaiyil Mythily Sivaraman’ (Comrade Mother: A daughter’s portrait of Mythily Sivaraman) was published in 2018. Kalpana’s forthcoming book ‘A Woman of No Consequence’ that re-constructs a woman’s life and times in the Madras Presidency will be published by Westland Books later this year. Kalpana is currently working on an English translation of the memoir of Lakshmi Amma, a social and political activist from a small peasant household in Tamil Nadu.