معرفی
Laila Rajani is a Visiting Fellow at the Health Matters working group, University of Vienna, and a Doctoral Researcher at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. She is also a member of the Centre of Biomedicine, Self and Society hosted at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh.
Her Wellcome Trust-funded doctoral research critically examines unintended mental health consequences of development programmes in Tharparkar, Pakistan, and the neoliberal logics governing psychiatric care in coal extraction-affected regions. Through ethnographic analysis of mental health actors—including psychiatrists, police, health workers, and development professionals—she investigates how psychological discourses are brokered within rapidly transforming socio-ecological landscapes marked by infrastructural modernization and political shifts.
Broadly, Laila explores conceptualizations of progress, well-being, and the "good life" across cultural contexts. Her research integrates critical global health, development anthropology, and medical anthropology to analyze how mental health frameworks operate within South Asia's political economies. Previous projects include pandemic-era family dynamics research (UCL), Islamophobia in New York's art industry among Pakistani Americans (Brooklyn Arts Council), and post-conflict rehabilitation in Pakistan's Swat Valley (Collective for Social Science Research).
Her professional background spans journalism as a reporter for Dawn’s Herald magazine, high school teaching in Lima and Karachi, and development practice with UNESCO and the World Bank in Islamabad.
Laila actively contributes to interdisciplinary research collectives including the Health Matters working group (University of Vienna) and the Centre of Biomedicine, Self and Society (University of Edinburgh), where she examines intersections of biomedicine, selfhood, and societal transformation.
