Smita Ramnarain

  • Associate Professor
  • 812 Chafee SSC
  • Email: sramnarain@uri.edu
  • Office Location: 812 Chafee Social Science Center
    Dept. of Economics
    University of Rhode Island
    Kingston RI 02881

Biography

Dr. Smita Ramnarain’s research interests lie at the intersection of political economy, development, and feminist economics. Her work has focused on the gendered political economy of development in the Majority World, particularly in South Asia. In her work, she examines the gendered impact of economic policies and programs in contexts of economic, social, political, or environmental upheaval (war, complex emergencies, climate change, and/or agrarian crisis) and the consequences of these changes on women’s wellbeing. Her work has been published in diverse and interdisciplinary fora – such as the Development and Change, Feminist Economics, Gender Pace & Culture, the Community Development Journal, and the Review of Radical Political Economics – and in edited volumes, including The Social and Solidarity Economy Encyclopedia, the Handbook of Gender in Asia, and the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Heterodox Economics. She uses mixed methods in her research and has carried out field work in India and Nepal.

Dr. Ramnarain teaches courses on principles of economics and on economic growth and development. She has published on pedagogy in journals such as the Review of Radical Political Economics and the Forum for Social Economics. In addition, she has received the Excellence in General Education award and the URI/AAUP Solidarity Early Career award, both in 2020, and the David Dooley and Lynn Baker-Dooley Faculty Senate Appreciation Award in 2021 for her service to the URI faculty senate. She has also held the Silvia-Chandley Professorship in Nonviolence and Peace from 2019-21.

She has mentored several motivated undergraduate students with their research projects on diverse topics, and served on several PhD and Masters’ committees for international development.

Research

Feminist economics, political economy, labor and economic development, the economics of war, crises, and peace.

Selected Publications

Edited Volumes and Symposia

Review of Radical Political Economics, Symposium on the “Political Economy of Occupation, Colonialism, and Conflict in Palestine,” with Surbhi Kesar and Don Goldstein. Expected June 2025.

Review of Radical Political Economics, Special Issue on “Anti-Capitalist Pedagogy and Teaching Radical Economics,” with Surbhi Kesar, Andrew Mearman, Gary Mongiovi, Geoffrey Schneider and Mary Wrenn. Expected December 2025.

 

Feminist Economics, Special Issue on “Conflict, Disaster, and Violence Against Women,” with Bilge Erten and Nata Duvvury. Expected Summer 2025.

Selected Publications

Ramnarain, Smita and Anupama Uppal. 2025. Boundary struggles and social reproduction: The farmers’ protests in India. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, under review.

 

Basole, Amit, Srishti Yadav, and Smita Ramnarain. 2025. Qualitative and Ethnographic Methods in Economics. In Bruce Cronin (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Heterodox Economics, Second Edition, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, forthcoming.

 

Ramnarain, Smita and Anna Santucci. 2025. Bringing radical assessment into radical political economy: an ungrading experience. Review of Radical Political Economics. https://doi.org/10.1177/04866134241261145

 

Erten, Bilge, Nata Duvvury, and Smita Ramnarain. 2024. Introduction to the Special Issue on Conflict, Disasters, and Violence Against Women. Feminist Economics 30 (4).

 

Ramnarain, Smita. 2024. Feminist Radical Political Economy. In Mona Ali and Ann Davis (eds.), Radical Political Economics: Principles, Perspectives, and Post-Capitalist Futures, Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

 

 

Rao, Smriti, Smita Ramnarain, Sirisha Naidu, Anupama Uppal, and Avanti Mukherjee. 2024. Work and Social Reproduction in Rural India: Lessons from Time-Use data. Journal of Agrarian Change. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12569

 

Ramnarain, Smita. 2022. Peace, Non-violence, and Social and Solidarity Economies. In Ilcheong Yi (ed.), The Social and Solidarity Economy Encyclopedia, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

 

Rao, Smriti and Smita Ramnarain. 2022. Gender, Social Protection and Crises of Social Reproduction: Contextualizing NREGA. Review of Radical Political Economics 55 (1): 70-92.

Ramnarain, Smita and Smriti Rao. 2020. Understanding Women’s Participation in NREGA. In Madhura Swaminathan, V.K. Ramachandran and Shruti Nagabhushan (eds.), Women’s Work in Rural Economies, New Delhi, India: Foundation for Agrarian Studies and Tulika Publishers.

Ramnarain, Smita. 2020. Exploring the Continuum: Gender-based Violence and Security in Nepal’s Transition to Peace. In Shirlena Huang and Kanchana Ruwanpura (eds.), The Handbook of Gender in Asia, Edward Elgar.

Joshi-Rajkarnikar, Pratistha and Smita Ramnarain. 2019. Female Headship and Women’s Work in Nepal. Feminist Economics 26 (2): 126-159.

Venkatasubramanian, Kalpana and Smita Ramnarain. 2018. Gender and Adaptation to Climate Change: Perspectives from Pastoral Communities in Gujarat, India. Development and Change 49 (6): 1580-1604.

Provencher, Ashley and Smita Ramnarain. 2018. Class Debates as an Instructional Tool in Intermediate Level Microeconomics. Forum for Social Economics 48 (4): 354-372.

Ramnarain, Smita. 2016. Unpacking Female Headship and Agency in Post-Conflict Nepal. Feminist Economics 22(1): 80-105.

Ramnarain, Smita. 2015. Universalized Categories, Dissonant Realities: Gendering Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Nepal. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 22(9): 1305-1322.

Ramnarain Smita. 2015. Interrogating Women’s Peace Work: Community-based Peacebuilding, Gender, and Savings’ Co-operatives in Post-conflict Nepal. Community Development Journal 50 (4): 677-692.

Ramnarain, Smita. 2013. The political economy of peacebuilding: The case of women’s cooperatives in Nepal. 2013, Economics of Peace and Security Journal 8 (2): 25-33.

Basole, Amit and Smita Ramnarain. 2016.  Qualitative and Ethnographic Methods in Economics. In Lee, Fred and Bruce Cronin (eds.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Heterodox Economics, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Pickbourn, Lynda and Smita Ramnarain. 2016. ‘Separate or Symbiotic? Quantitative, Qualitative and Historical Methods in (Heterodox) Economic Research.’ In Lee, Fred and Bruce Cronin (eds.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Heterodox Economics, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.