Aliya Rao

Aliya Hamid Rao is an Assistant Professor in Qualitative Research Methodology in the Department of Methodology and a Faculty Associate at the International Inequalities Institute. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016.

Aliya’s research agenda is broadly in the areas of work, gender, and family. She draws on qualitative research methods – specifically interviews and observations – to understand how economic risk and employment uncertainty permeate and shape people’s subjectivities, gendered practices, and social relationships in the institutions of work and family. In current and ongoing work, Aliya operationalizes employment uncertainty as unemployment.

Central to this is her book, Crunch Time: How Married Couples Confront Unemployment (University of California Press, 2020), which shows how comparable men and women have starkly different experiences of unemployment. Men’s unemployment is seen as an urgent problem while women’s unemployment – cocooned within a narrative of staying at home – is treated like a non-issue in their families. The book illuminates the interactional mechanisms that sustain gender inequality at a time that is ripe for dismantling these.

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) University of Pennsylvania (2010 — 2016)
• Master's degree London School of Economics and Political Science (2007 — 2008)
• B.A (Hons) St. Stephen's College (2003 — 2006)

Companies

• Assistant Professor The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (2020)
• Assistant Professor of Sociology Singapore Management University (2018 — 2020)
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow Stanford University (2016 — 2018)
• External Collaborator International Labor Office (2009 — 2009)