Laila Rajani is a visiting fellow at the Health Matters working group at the University of Vienna and a doctoral researcher at School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. She is also a member of Centre of Biomedicine, Self and Society hosted at the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh. Her research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, examines unintended consequences of development programmes on mental health and the underlying neoliberal logics that govern the psychiatric care provided as an antidote in Tharparkar region of Sindh, Pakistan.
Drawing on critical global health, anthropology of development, and medical anthropology, Laila’s project focusses on how mental health actors including psychiatrists, police officers, lady health workers, public health officials, and private and development sector professionals broker and translate psy-discourses in a rapidly modernising region. Against the backdrop of ongoing coal extraction, subsequent transforming ecologies and shifting politics in Tharparkar, the research aims to nuance the public understanding around development and health inequities and contribute to growing literature on the subject in South Asia.
Broadly, Laila is interested in how we understand progress and well-being, and how it shapes our understanding of what makes a good life. Previously, Laila has worked on shifts in family dynamics during coronavirus pandemic (UCL), Islamophobia and art industry amongst Pakistani Americans in New York City (Brooklyn Arts Council), and post-conflict rehabilitation in Swat after the end of counterinsurgency in 2012 (Collective for Social Science Research). She has also worked as a reporter for Dawn’s Herald magazine, high school teacher in Lima and Karachi, and as development practitioner at UNESCO and World Bank Islamabad.