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Andrea Wright is a PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology. Her research examines the intersections of race, gender, and labor in contemporary India, by illuminating the processes that drive women from the Northeast region to migrate to the city of Bangalore and the transformations they undergo as migrants, beauty-therapy trainees, and laborers. Drawn from twenty-four months of ethnographic fieldwork that included participation in a beauty-therapy training course and labor in a local spa, Andrea's research utilizes a four-pronged approach to elucidate the manner in which women from a minority ethnic socio-cultural background are transformed into professionals who provide intimate bodily-care. She incorporates different scales of transformation (economic, landscape, personal, social) to address growing concern for the vulnerabilities of single women migrants, especially through their own experiences of inclusion, exclusion, transformation, and empowerment.

Graduate Student Seminar