Institution
Research Adjunct Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University
Disciplines
Socio-cultural anthropology, Gender and Women’s Rights
Research Focus
Women’s rights, social reproduction and rural livelihoods, development policy processes, critical nutrition studies, feminist organizational change
Contact
Sheila.rao@affiliate.mcgill.ca
Additional Information
Sheila is an socio-cultural anthropologist and international cooperation consultant specializing in social reproduction in rural livelihoods, feminist analysis of organizational change, development policies and critical nutrition studies. Currently, her research is centred on ongoing collaborations with women’s rights organizations and agroecology organizations in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia to examine forms of care labour embedded within diverse livelihood practices.
Munyingi, D., Joseph, A., Kamau, J., Nemura, M., Brander, L., Rao, S., (forthcoming) A collaborative approach to conceptualizing care labour in agroecology: Case studies from women’s rights and agroecology organizations in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Ethiopia, in (eds Dr. Sarah Ebel and Dr. Katherine Reedy), A Woman’s Work: Reclaiming the Commons through Knowledge, Care, and Culture’ : Rowan and Littlefield.
Rao, S. (2025). Meeting nutritional health objectives through plant breeding: A feminist analysis of
biofortification and potential for genome-editing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Special Issue for Elementa:
Science of the Anthropocene. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2022.00150.
