Academic Research

My research spans multiple scales of governance and financial practices, including international institutions, state regulators and local communities and women's everyday financial lives. Theoretically, I am interested in racial capitalism and imperial residues that persist in contemporary finance. My ethnographic research is historically embedded and locates present economic processes in social-economic globalised histories. Here is a summary of my three key research domains: 

• Social reproduction, labour and finance: I research how contemporary finance capitalises upon women's social reproduction, and how women's domestic labour is capitalised for the direct creation of financial value. In my PhD, I ethnographically traced financial labour and investments made from Geneva, Switzerland into India's microfinance institutions and ultimately to the women borrowers who take on credit to survive. My research looks at the multiple strategies women use to repay credit and ensure positive credit scores. I am broadly interested in the capitalisation of social reproduction amidst the wider context of jobless growth in the South.

• Regulation, financial governance and international financial frameworks: I research new forms of financial governance including hybrid governance and what is labeled 'self-regulation' of the financial sector. I interrogate how the state, especially the postcolonial state is rendered transformed with increased financialisation of the household. This includes looking at changing state roles in relation to welfare and development provision, state facilitation of private finance and financialisation of the state itself as state institutions come to increasingly resemble private finance institutions. I empirically study changes to citizenship as citizens (especially women citizens) are moulded into financial customers who must participate in financial markets to access basic services.  These transformations are embedded in international governance frameworks including the World Bank, Bank for International Settlements and the G20, which I have researched and published on extensively.

• Digital finance, gendered labour and AI: My current research is a multi-scalar study of the booming fintech credit sector in India, including the reconfiguring roles and articulations of the state in enabling fintechs for credit to women borrowers, as well as local economies as these become interwoven with digital credit. In the first research strand, I am researching new forms of digital financial regulation, especially self-regulation and how this reshapes both state and financial accountability. This is particularly relevant with increased use of AI in digital lending which can introduce new forms of discrimination based on gender, caste, social belonging etc, raising new concerns for digital financial governance and accountability mechanisms. In the second research strand, I ethnographically look at women borrowers' experiences with fintech credit, including interactions with digital interfaces, uses of quick credit, and what happens when women are unable to repay digital credit and end up defaulting. 

Work for public institutions, NGOs and think tanks 

I am deeply committed to creating more inclusive economic-financial systems and with this goal, regularly assist and collaborate with government institutions, think tanks, NGOs and international organizations to produce research that can create effective, real-life changes in the lives of people who use financial services. I have worked closely with the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom to produce in-depth political economy analyses of gender-based economic inequalities that emerge during conflict, to help design conflict solutions that have lasting effects. I have also been a contributor for research for designing better governance frameworks for finance with the UN Business and Human Rights Working Group and the World Economic Forum. I also work closely with NGOs in India to design economic interventions that value women's labour. I am open to collaborations and consulting for institutions that work on identifying and valuing hidden forms of labour in the economy, including women's household labour and feminised forms of labour performed largely in the Global South. You can reach me at tanushree.kaushal@graduateinstitute.ch to discuss new research and policy threads in my areas of expertise.