Raka Sen

Doctoral Candidate in Sociology

2023

Raka Sen is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests span environmental, labor, urban, gender, migration, and development studies. Situated at the intersection of all of these subjects, Raka's work looks to understand how climate change and development is reshaping the everyday lives of local people in the Sundarban region of India and Bangladesh. Building off of ethnographic engagement and a longitudinal survey, she aims to challenge traditional notions of climate adaptation in lieu of theoretical frameworks that better encapsulate the lived realities of people facing climate changed right now. She has published on “Everyday Adaptations” to climate change, "Embodied Everyday Adaptations", and "Adaptation Labor". Her graduate research has been supported by the Fulbright Nehru Research Grant, Center for Advanced Study of India, FLAS, and the Gertrude and Otto Pollak Summer Research Fellowship.

Research Interests

Climate change, labor, gender, rural, social resilience, cities, neighborhoods and disaster sociology