Dr Neelam Raina
Name | Dr Neelam Raina |
---|---|
Job title | Director of Research |
Research institute | |
Primary appointment | Research Knowledge Transfer Office |
Email address | n.raina@mdx.ac.uk |
ORCID | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5664-2411 |
Contact category | Academic staff |
Biography
Biography Dr. Neelam Raina is an Associate Professor of design and development at Middlesex University, London. Her research interests include conflict, security, peace building, material cultures, gender, and livelihood generation in fragile, conflict affected states. Raina’s work explores notions of healing, trauma, peace and reflection through the embodied practices of making, using material culture and tacit knowledge as the underpinning for approaching violence and peace building and for sustainable income generation. Raina is a post conflict reconstruction expert with a focus on South Asia where she has conducted extensive empirical research over the last two decades. The Women, Peace and Security agenda is key to Neelam’s and her research seeks to foreground voices of vulnerable and marginalised women. Dr Raina has led several large scale competitively funded research projects which examine material and social practices through which Muslim women in conflict areas reproduce themselves on a daily and generational basis and through which the social relations and material bases of capitalism are renewed. Her work allows connections to be built between, creative home-based workers who are largely seen as peripheral, to development economics, and on the fringes of formal employment and contributors to GDP; to the larger notions of peace building, countering and preventing violent extremism, poverty spirals and conflict theory through culturally significant, socially relevant practices. She connects British creative industry into solution-based impactful approaches to global challenges through research. Raina is a strong advocate for Afghan women and is the Director of the Secretariat to the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Afghan women and girls in UK parliament. Her research in Afghanistan is ongoing as she brings women’s tacit knowledge to commercially viable spaces from the confines of the home. Raina has submitted oral and written evidence to UK Select committees specially about Afghanistan where she continues to work. Raina has a PhD in Design and Development, and a master’s in design and Manufacture from De Montfort University, Leicester. From 2018-2021 she was the Challenge Leader for UKRI’s conflict and security portfolio for the Global Challenges Research Fund. Raina has been a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security. She is the editor for the International Journal of Traditional Arts, and her new work ‘Creative Economies of Culture in South Asia – Performers and Craftspeople’ comes out in 2023. Raina's latest essay - ‘Women’s Tacit, uncoded knowledge Ownership and Value in Conflict Zones’, appears Katy Deepwell's edited book, De-/anti-/post-colonial feminisms in contemporary art and Textile Crafts in September 2023. She also writes for British newspapers.
Teaching Academic - Doctoral Supervision. Critical and Contextual Studies across Undergraduate Programes in the School of Design. Community based - Creative design and textile craft based design training modules Field Research Training Business skills for women led enterprise including social media marketing for craft made textiles.
Employment
Education and qualifications
Grants
Projects
- The Value of Culture in Conflict - Investigating the Sustainable Livelihood Generation for Craftswomen in Azad Kashmir (Pakistan)
- GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub
Prizes and Awards
Impact
- A Design Sprint for the Creative Industries Sector Vision
- Equality and the UK asylum process Fourth Report of Session 2022–23
- Withdrawal from Afghanistan Fifth Report of Session 2022–23
- All Party Parliamentary Group - Afghan Women and Girls
Evidence to public body
Written and Oral evidence presented to UK Defence Select Committee
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/40021/html/
Written Evidence Submitted
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/40580/documents/198406/default/
Evidence presented to Defence Select Committee was used in this formal fifth report.
External activities
Textile and Dyes as Transnational, Global Knowledge
Our understanding of textile and dye crafts, both at the local and global levels, is invariably colored by colonial, national and post-war UN approaches to ‘development and rehabilitation’. More recently, the neo-liberal wave of institutionalizing art and culture through the frames of ‘heritage’ and/or ‘creative economy’ has begun to shape our ideas and sentiments about handmade textiles, clothing and dyes.
This ISGS invites applications from Arts, Design, Social Sciences and Humanities graduate students (doctoral, including doctorate practice-based research, and research master's) and early-career professionals (up to 3 years after the completion of the PhD). All applicants must be committed to or actively working on projects that engage with the ISGS theme.
In this LeidenGlobal-HAB-IIAS In Situ Graduate School (ISGS) we will aim to interrogate prevailing, dominant discourses through other, less visible, and marginalized vantage points.
Research outputs
Women’s tacit, uncoded knowledge ownership and value in conflict zones
Raina, N. 2023. Women’s tacit, uncoded knowledge ownership and value in conflict zones. in: Deepwell, K. (ed.) De-/anti-/post-colonial feminisms in contemporary art and textile crafts London, UK KT Press.Transforming conflict and displacement through Arts and Humanities
Raina, N. 2021. Transforming conflict and displacement through Arts and Humanities. Praxis - Displacement and Conflict Nexus Event. Leeds University Feb 2021The Practices of Making
Raina, N. 2022. The Practices of Making.Afghan Solidarity Coalition - submission to Defence Committee: Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Raina, N. and Blitz, B. 2021. Afghan Solidarity Coalition - submission to Defence Committee: Withdrawal from Afghanistan. Parliamentary Committee on Defence.Failing and forgetting Afghanistan
Raina, N. 2021. Failing and forgetting Afghanistan. The Gender, Justice and Security Hub.We tried to get eligible Afghans out of Kabul. British officials did little to help [News article]
Raina, N. and Blitz, B. 2021. We tried to get eligible Afghans out of Kabul. British officials did little to help [News article]. Telegraph Media Group Limited.Women, culture, knowledge and solutions
Raina, N. 2021. Women, culture, knowledge and solutions. Collaborations and Partnerships for Climate. London, UK 23 Jun 2022The value of traditional knowledge to women in fragile locations
Raina, N. 2021. The value of traditional knowledge to women in fragile locations. UCLA Center for India and South Asia (CISA) Speaker Series: : The Value of Traditional Knowledge to Women in Fragile Places. Online webinar 01 - 01 Mar 2021COVID-19 as a global challenge: towards an inclusive and sustainable future
Lambert, H., Gupte, J., Fletcher, H., Hammond, L., Lowe, N., Pelling, M., Raina, N., Shahid, T. and Shanks, K. 2020. COVID-19 as a global challenge: towards an inclusive and sustainable future. The Lancet Planetary Health. 4 (8), pp. 312-314. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30168-6The value of culture in conflict
Raina, N. and Hussain, F. 2017. The value of culture in conflict. National College of Art, Rawalpindi, Islamabad 17 Oct 2017Fabric of India - a lecture
Raina, N. 2015. Fabric of India - a lecture. Fabric of India Exhibition and Conference. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 03 Oct 2015 - 10 Jan 2016 London, UK Victoria and Albert Museum.Reconstruction of Kashmir and the role of Islam
Raina, N. 2014. Reconstruction of Kashmir and the role of Islam. in: Lindberg, A. and Fennell, S. (ed.) Gender and Islam: perspectives from South Asia Routledge.Research Impact
To further understand the wider economic spillover value of the Creative Industries to other sectors, a policy co-design sprint, commissioned by DCMS and the Creative Industries challenge team at UKRI (hereafter referred to as UKRI), and led by the Design Council, was undertaken to develop an understanding of how government and industry led interventions could help maximise this value. This took place alongside work commissioned by DCMS from Frontier Economics to explore an approach to data collection on economic spillovers to build the evidence of wider economy impacts.
Withdrawal from Afghanistan Fifth Report of Session 2022–23648
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