Suparna Bhaskaran is a non-resident Fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. She is the Project Manager and Co-Principal Investigator of the Color of Wealth in Chicago Study bringing ethnographic and transdisciplinary approaches to understanding wealth and wealth inequities. The Color of Wealth in Chicago Study is part of a multi-city series of studies on the asset and debt positions of communities of color localized to cities that include Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Tulsa, and Washington D.C. Her multi-state research has also documented how “wealth stripping” practices (such as predatory lending and debt, racial and gender segregation, and low-wage work) systematically takes a toll on the well-being of low-wealth Black and Brown women in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Newark, NJ.
As a senior researcher at the Othering and Belonging Institute, at the University of California, Berkeley, her work explored the relationship between public health and wealth in post-industrial cities and communities. Her work focused on the city of Detroit and its communities, within the context of the restructuring of Detroit’s Great Lakes Water Authority, water inequities, austerity policies and the city’s history of systemic racism, and shrinking social safety net programs for its residents. She has also worked for the State of Ohio as a health policy researcher and community educator, particularly in relation to affordable healthcare and safety net programs.
She has taught in Gender and Sexuality Studies Programs at Antioch College, Ohio Wesleyan University and Agnes Scott College.
At Ohio State University she is a Lecturer in the Department of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies and has taught courses that include US Immigration and Migration, Health and Inequality, Gender and Democracy, and Race and Public Policy.
She organizes with community groups working on immigrant and refugee rights and transnational popular and political education. She is one of the founding members of OPAWL: Building AAPI Progressive Feminist Leadership.
Select Publications:
“Flattening the Curve or Flattening Life? Everyday Life is a Constant Struggle, COVID-19 just makes it worse,” Economic and Political Weekly, (co-author, 2021); “Remembering Latina Feminist Philosopher Maria Lugones,” Sinister Wisdom, (2021); Public Health & Wealth in Post-Bankruptcy Detroit (2017); Pinklining: How Wall Street’s Predatory Products Pillage Women’s Wealth, Opportunities, and Futures (2016); Made In India: Decolonization, Queer Sexualities, Transnational Projects (2004).
Areas of Expertise:
- Gender & Racial Justice
- Immigration
- Wealth Inequality
- Health, Medicine & Structural Inequities
- Policy/Advocacy Studies
- Globalization and Work
- South Asia and Diasporas
This commentary is intended as an addendum and recent update to the original research article published in World Affairs, “The High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Unusual Institutional Arrangement of a Non-Authoritarian, yet Controlled, Democracy”