Sohini Kar is a socio-cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on economic anthropology, and on urban South Asia. In particular, she looks at the impact of increasing financialization on poverty, development programs, and social movements.
Dr Kar’s book, Financializing Poverty: Labor and Risk in Indian Microfinance from Stanford University Press was awarded the 2020 Bernard Cohn Book Prize sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies. Financializing Poverty ethnographically examines how the emergence of commercial microfinance has allowed financial institutions in the city of Kolkata, India, to capitalize on the poverty of its residents. In addition to her work on microfinance, Dr Kar has written about women in finance, and on India’s financial inclusion policy, and its relation to social welfare programmes. She is currently working on financial activism and its impact on development goals.
Her expertise has been featured in Business Insider, Bloomberg, Financial Times, CNN Business, CBC Radio, Le Monde, Scroll India, Science, and The European. You can also hear her talk about her research on microfinance on Upstream Podcast, New Books Network, as well as here, and here.
Prior to joining LSE, Dr Kar held a postdoctoral position as Harvard College Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University between 2013-14. She holds an MA and PhD in Anthropology from Brown University, an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Economics and French from Columbia University.
Follow Dr. Kar on Twitter: @KarSohini
You can find her publications on Google Scholar and Academia.edu
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