Komal Chauhan

Komal Chauhan is a Researcher in the Leverhulme Trust-funded project 'Reputation and the Reproduction of Social Inequality' (Rep2SI) within the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics (LSE). She holds a PhD in Sociology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and was a DAAD visiting scholar at the University of Göttingen’s Centre for Modern Indian Studies. Her work focuses on political economy, rural labour dynamics, caste and gender in India, and ethnography.

Education

• PhD in Sociology, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (India)
• DAAD Visiting PhD Research Scholar, University of Göttingen (Germany)

Research Interests

Chauhan examines agrarian change, debt bondage, and labor relations in rural India, particularly their intersections with caste and gender. Her doctoral research analyzed lower-caste women’s labor in sugarcane farming, revealing mechanisms of vulnerability through patriarchal restrictions and neoliberal credit systems. She explores resistance strategies of Dalit women against caste-patriarchal capitalism. Current work integrates social network analysis into her project on social inequality.

Grants & Projects

• Principal researcher in Rep2SI (Leverhulme Trust-funded, 2024–present)

Labs/Teams

Associated with the Rep2SI interdisciplinary team at LSE, focusing on global social inequality mechanisms.