Naila Kabeer

Naila Kabeer is Professor of Gender and Development in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics (LSE) and on the Faculty of LSE’s International Inequalities Institute.  Before that, she was Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex and Professor at the Department of International Development at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.  Her main research interests are gender, poverty, labour markets, social protection and citizenship and she has a long track record in teaching, training, research and advisory work in these areas. She trained as an economist but now works on an interdisciplinary basis.  She has published extensively. Her earliest book was Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development thought (1994), her latest is Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, agency and the Bangladesh Paradox (Open Access, LSE Press September 2024) and there have been several articles, books and blogs in between.  She has been associated in an editorial capacity with a number of leading journals in her field, including Development and Change, Gender and Development, the Canadian Journal of Development Studies and the Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Journal. She is on the advisory editorial board of Feminist Economics and was President of the International Association of Feminist Economics (2018-2019). 

Her work reaches out to students, policy makers and practitioners.  She was on the World Bank’s External Gender Consultative Group, a trustee of Oxfam, UK, on the advisory boards of International Centre for Research on Women (Washington), the Women’s Rights Programme of the Open Society Foundation (New York), the Societies Division of the British Council (UK), PANOS and the Policy Advisory Group for DFID (UK) to which she was seconded for a year.  She has also worked in a research and advisory capacity with NGOs in UK (including Oxfam and Action Aid) and in South Asia (Nijera Kori, PRADAN and BRAC, Bangladesh). She is currently on the Advisory Board of UNRISD, Geneva, the UNU-Institute for Global Health and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (LSE).  She is also directing the research programme on Gender Justice and the Wellbeing Economy at the International Inequalities Institute that is working with a network of scholars, policy makers and activists.  Her fellowship at the Bosch Academy will be exploring the reconfiguration of livelihoods that will be necessary for a gender-just transition to wellbeing economy.

Last updated: 2024