ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Dr Sharmila Parmanand

Dr Sharmila Parmanand

Assistant Professor in Gender, Development and Globalisation

Department of Gender Studies

Room No
PAN.11.01
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Languages
English, Filipino
Key Expertise
sex work; trafficking; migration; gender and development

About me

Dr Sharmila Parmanand is also an Associate Academic at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and co-convenor of the . 

My research examines the colonial histories and gendered logics that underpin development and humanitarian interventions in the global south, with a focus on the politics of knowledge production and feminist entanglements with the state on issues such as migration, gender-based violence, precarious labour, economic restructuring and social protection.  

I am currently working on my first book, titled Saving Our Sisters: The Politics of Anti-Trafficking and Sex Work in the Philippines, which uses the Philippines as a case study to show how anti-trafficking invokes the language of development and human rights to entrench border control practices and the gendered policing of precarious workers. This manuscript makes the case for an expansive postcolonial reimagining of anti-trafficking that repositions it as a question of social justice and equity rather than criminalisation.   

I have started research for my second monograph, which compares sex work activisms within the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore across the last three decades. It will offer insights into non-traditional forms of political mobilisation by stigmatised and criminalised populations, as well as sexual rights and labour activism in a global context. A central theme is how sex workers engage in claims-making, produce insurgent spaces, and challenge sexual and gender hierarchies, rather than passively accepting moral and spatial regulations imposed on them.   

I have also been studying the connections between masculinity, nationalism, and populism, primarily in the context of former Philippine President Duterte’s war on drugs and several world leaders’ responses to the pandemic. My work in this field speaks to the seductiveness of moral panics in difficult socio-economic times, the harms of securitising social problems, and the centrality of care and care provisioning to development. 

Prior to joining ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, I was a lecturer at the University of Vermont Department of Theater, University of the Philippines-Diliman Department of Women and Development Studies, and Ateneo de Manila University Department of English and Literature, and supervised courses on gender and politics and comparative Southeast Asian politics at the University of Cambridge

Selected media:

Major Awards:

  • ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (London School of Economics and Political Science, 2021-2022)
  • Gates Cambridge PhD Scholarship (University of Cambridge, 2016-2020)
  • Australian Leadership Award MA Scholarship (University of Melbourne, 2011-2012)

Expertise Details

sex work; trafficking; migration; gender and development; gender and populism; feminist ethnography

Publications

Journal articles and book chapters

  • Shape-shifting and strategic in/visibility: Comparing sex work activism in Singapore and the Philippines. TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia (forthcoming, 2023)
  • Democratic backsliding and threats to human rights in Duterte’s Philippines. In Alison Brysk (ed.) UK: Edward Elgar Press (in press)
  • Ethics and Social Welfare, 2022
  • European Journal of Women's Studies, 2022
  • Feminist Review, 2021
  • Journal of International Women’s Studies, 2021 **shortlisted for the UK Feminist Studies Association Student Essay Prize 2020
  • Review of WomenStudies, 2021
  • Anti-Trafficking Review, 2019 **most viewed article in the journal’s history
  • Social TransformationsJournal of the Global South, 2014

 

Interviews, short articles, video podcasts, reports, event organising

  • Co-convened symposium on , funded by the Sociological Review Foundation, May 2022. 
  • (co-authored with Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women). , 2022
  • ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Engenderings, 2022
  • 2021
  • open Democracy2021
  • (co-produced with Gerasimov, Bobby). . Video podcast seriesfunded by the University of Cambridge Office of Public Engagement, 2020.
  • open Democracy2019
  • Published interviews with the Philippine Sex Workers Collective, produced by PAMPUBLIKO (2016): , , 

 

Book reviews

  • South East Asia Research, 2022
  • The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth by Julie Bindel. Gender Work and Organization, 2019

Teaching