Ranji Devadason
Research Assistant
Department of Sociology
University of Bristol
12 Woodland Road
BRISTOL BS8 1UQ
Telephone: +44(0)117 954 6799 or +44 (0)117 928 8216
E-mail: ranji.devadason@bristol.ac.uk
Ranji Devadason is currently working on a project investigating young adult employment trajectories in Bristol, in particular exploring how young adult experiences are shaped by gender, ethnicity and class. For more information about this project see http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Sociology/main/funded~1/winners/.
Ranji is interested in how household and individual resources impact upon peoples' experiences in employment, in particular, how ethnic identity and cultural boundaries impede or enhance opportunities. Her previous research includes: a small-scale study of identity construction amongst 'British Asian' women in Nottingham, a dissertation on ethnic minority graduates' experiences in employment using Roger Ballard's concept of 'cultural navigation' as an analytical framework and a case study of dowry-related violence amongst South Asians in Britain. She is about to commence an ESRC funded PhD comparing young adult employment trajectories in Bristol and Gothenburg; whether young adult experiences in both cities reflect labour market changes wrought by globalisation will be a key question for this research.
Publications:
2000 'Dowry abuse in Britain: a culture-specific form of domestic violence' in the International Journal of Punjab Studies 8, May 2000.
2000 Collective Identities, Diverse Lives: British Asian women speak written and edited by Bina Dattani, Ranji Devadason, Sundeep Kandola, and Thara Raj. Nottingham: The Women's Centre (booklet: non-academic).
2002 Book review: South Asians and the Dowry Problem W. Menski (Ed.) in the International Journal of Punjab Studies (forthcoming).
Conference Papers:
'Cultural Navigation: negotiating ethnic minority identities in Britain's graduate labour market' at the EUROFOR Summer School on Migration and New European identities in Tuscany, July 2000.
'Spatial mobility and cultural boundaries; 'Winners' and 'Losers' in the Bristol labour market' at the EUROFOR Conference European Metropolises and Cultural Boundaries in Berlin, 19 - 22 October 2000.
'In and out of work: job changing, life changing and young adult identities' with Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley at the European Sociological Association in Helsinki, 28 August - 1 September, 2001.
'Which Way is Up? Changing Discourses of Inequality and Young Adults' Labour Market Trajectories' with Harriet Bradley and Steve Fenton at the Work, Employment and Society Conference in Nottingham, 11-13 September, 2001.