Research Fellow
After leaving Pharmacy as a full time job in 1989, Meeta worked in the voluntary sector in Manchester for seven years on issues of low pay, homeworking, racial justice (race discrimination, racial harassment and police complaints) and domestic violence. She carried out research, casework, community development, training as well as liaising and collaborating on campaigns. As the ‘Black Rights Worker’ for five years at Salford Law Centre, Meeta was responsible for identifying and developing the Centre’s services on access to legal and social justice for black communities. After this she moved to California where she worked as the resource coordinator/community organiser for Bernal Heights Neighbourhood Centre in San Francisco on ‘Safety Network Program’ (funded by the San Francisco Mayor’s Office) to build community involvement and develop safety net for Welfare reform focusing on immigrant and low-income communities. Presently she teaches modules on youth cultures, ‘race and identity’ and globalisation focusing on race, feminism, subcultural theory, media and moral panics, multiculturalism, popular culture, femininity and globalisation.
Meeta is primarily interested in sociological analysis of race and racism and its significance in postcolonial subject formations. She would like to develop her past research on emotional citizenship; global popular culture and public sphere; racialisation and embodiment, ‘race’ and feminism; Orientalism; neo-colonialism; and decolonising practices. In particular, she is interested in the micro and macro politics of neo-liberal global circuits of media and cinema culture/s as it reconfigures and repackages everyday emotional imaginary and social life in British localities.
Meeta Rani Jha
Working Lives Research Institute
31 Jewry St, London EC3N 2EY
M.Jha@londonmet.ac.uk
Tel (w) 020 7320 3013
Tel (m) 07949 076407
Journal of Creative Communication Sage Online Journal “The Politic of Happiness in British Asian Bombay Cinematic Practices” a special online edition on Indian Diaspora in collaboration with a number of scholars wring on Indian cinema and south Asian visual and cinema cultures.
September 2007 ‘Melancholic States’ an International conference at the Institute of Women’s Studies, Lancaster University, UK, ‘Bombay Cinema Song Practices and the British Asian Diasporic Melancholia’.
July 2007 ‘Re-presenting Diasporas in Cinema and New (Digital Media)’ an International conference at University of Exeter: ‘Female Sexual Autonomy and assertiveness: British Asian Disporic Aesthetic in Bombay Cinema Practices.’
January 2007 MeCCSA (Media, Communication, Cultural Studies Association ‘ Race’ Network) National Conference, Coventry): ‘Bollywood Practices: British Asian femininities and Postcolonial Sensibilities’.
June 2006 South Asian Popular Culture Conference, Manchester: Presented as part of panel on ‘India – Britain - Guyana: Locating the cultural politics of identity, diaspora and nation in global times’.
June 2006 ‘The Word Girl in a Global Frame’ (International feminism and Theory Group, Goldsmiths College, Sociology and Media and Communications): ‘Bollywood Babes: Mothers and Daughters in Bombay cinema experience’.
April 2006 Pacific Asian Cultural Studies Symposium, ‘Cultural Studies of India and Diaspora’: (Media and Communication Department, Goldsmiths College) ‘From Mother India to Miss Universe: Embodiment, Class and Globalisation’.
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