Alessandra Mezzadri

Alessandra Mezzadri is a Reader in Global Development & Political Economy at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London. She holds a BA/MSc in Economics from Rome La Sapienza, and MSc and PhD in Development Studies from SOAS. Her academic roles include Research Cluster Convenor for Global Labour, Activism and Social Justice, and co-founder of the Global Feminist Political Economy @SOAS Working Group. She collaborates with international bodies like ILO, UNIDO, and the Global Labour University, and co-founded the Labour Transfer summer school.

Her research focuses on global production systems, social reproduction theory, and feminist political economy. Key works include The Sweatshop Regime (Cambridge UP, 2017/2020) analyzing India’s garment industry, and edited volumes like Marx in the Field (Anthem Press, 2021). She explores intersections of class, gender, and race through lenses like global supply chains, modern slavery, and pandemic impacts.

Teaching includes modules on global development theories, trade politics, feminist political economy, and India’s informal economy. She supervises PhDs on topics like Indonesia’s garment labour regimes and gender dynamics in Gulf labour migration. Recent work addresses planetary crises through the lens of social reproduction and global development narratives.

Her articles (e.g., in Development and Change, Environment and Planning F) and edited handbooks (e.g., Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work, Edward Elgar, 2023) highlight systemic inequalities and grassroots resistance. She is Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies, bridging academia and activism.