Professor Kavita Datta, B.A., Botswana; PhD, Cambridge

Profile

I am a Professor of Development Geography with research interests in migration, money and food. My research is interdisciplinary, international and collaborative, and I regularly work with academic colleagues, policy makers and migrant and civic institutions. I work in Southern Africa and in the UK and my research has, thus far, funded by UKRI (ESRC, AHRC, BBSRC, NIHR), the Leverhulme Trust, Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council and Friends Provident Foundation.

My current roles are Head of School of Geography, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration.

I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

I am an Elected Representative (Faculty of Humanities and Social Science) on Queen Mary’s Council.

Teaching

My teaching shapes, and contributes, to the undergraduate and postgraduate global development curriculum offered by the School of Geography. My ambition is to foster critical and interdisciplinary understanding of development and migration studies, challenging the enduring coloniality of both subject areas. My teaching is research-led, informed by on-going projects and collaborations.  I am particularly keen on experiential and active learning. While I have led and contributed to several modules, I am particularly proud of Development Futures: Mumbai Unbound which kickstarted the internationalisation of the School of Geography’s teaching curriculum and entailed a weeklong field class in Mumbai. It is great to meet alumnae who still recall the module and to reflect on student feedback: “Taught by enthusiastic lecturer who makes you want to engage. Best module I have taken! Had a great time in the lecture room and out in India." (2017-2018).

Currently, I convene and teach Migration and Mobilities, a postgraduate module linked to the School’s MA Global Development and MA Global Development and International Business degree programmes. It explores theoretical, empirical and policy dimensions of patterns and processes of migration in a global context, and across the global North-South 'divide' from a scalar, relational and networked perspective. Informed by decolonial, gender, race and intersectional theory, the module grapples with diverse issues from migrant integration to labouring in global cities to financial and food practices.  Recent student module evaluations are positive: It brings in some very interesting theoretical angles to migration studies that I hadn't encountered before. The idea of mobility itself as a subject of study and the focus on the financial networks of migration and migrants were particularly rewarding, I thought (2023-24).

I co-lead an undergraduate field class to Malta and Gozo which is integrated into a first-year module, Sustainable Transitions which provides a detailed investigation of sustainability. Building on this, the field class entails a place-based exploration of the challenges and opportunities that island-states like Malta encounter, and the sustainability transitions it is undergoing. Scheduled in the first semester of the undergraduate programme, it is an important opportunity for new students to get to know staff and their peers.  

Student evaluations identify the field class as a particular highlight:

“I have enjoyed learning about our progress towards the SDGs and how with the help of innovative strategies we can as society become more sustainable. I enjoyed our tutorial where we are able express our different views, all while improving our understanding of global issues. Taking a trip to Malta and seeing first-hand the importance of sustainability to the Island nation was fascinating.” (2024-25).

Research

Research Interests:

My interests in migration, money, and food have developed along the following lines of enquiry encompassing current and recent projects:

1. My current collaborative research focuses on climate resilience, migrant remittances and food security. Remitting for Resilience: Enhancing food security and climate adaptation through gender inclusive migrant remittances (R2) is a three-year project funded by the Canadian New Frontiers in Research Fund. Entailing a collaboration with partners in Southern Africa and North America, the project will explore gendered migration corridors examining how financial and goods flows from migrants’ support climate adaptation strategies in origin communities. My co-edited book, the Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals, details my interest.  More details to follow as the research progresses.
2. My research on remittances places migrants at the centre of these practices, highlighting how money transfers are generated through their labour/ing in often low paid and poorly valued work. Recent projects (i) Connecting through Covid, funded by the ESRC, examines the impact of the pandemic on remittance flows, on migrant well-being and the digitalisation of financial and social lives. The project highlights the resilience of remittances, as embodied practices embedded in emotional and affective economies as well as financial flows that are increasingly being digitalised. (ii) Migrants and their Money, funded by Friends Provident Foundation, two ESRC-CASE studentships and London Citizens, seeks to contextualise remittances within migrants’ broader financial lives including debt, credit, banking and inheritance practices. This research remains a key reference point for research on migration and financial inclusion. It also informed and was informed by my work on the financialization of remittances as key stakeholders seek to leverage these flows for ‘productive’ and profitable purposes.
3. Food insecurity and practices are a third area of interest. This work spans diverse contexts of hunger from that experienced by young children who have severe acute malnutrition in rural and urban Zimbabwe to migrants living in the rich global cities like London encountering cultural food insecurity. I am especially intrigued by food cultures, how this shifts over time and generation and what food practices tell us about home and family. This interdisciplinary and international work has been funded by the AHRC, NIHR, BBSRC.

Publications

Books:

• Piper, N. and Datta, K. (Eds) (2024) Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. 
• Datta, K. (2012) Migrants and their money: Surviving financial exclusion in London. Bristol and Chicago: Policy Press and University of Chicago Press.  
• Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J., and McIlwaine, C. (2010) Global cities at work: Migrant labour in an uneven world. London: Pluto
• Datta, K. and Jones, G.A. (1999) Housing and Finance in Developing Countries. Routledge, London.

Recent journal articles and book chapters:

• Datta, K.; Brown, T.; Mutambasera (2024) ‘Road runners’ and Fanta: Intersectional cultural food in/security among Zimbabwean migrants living in UK cities - ScienceDirect;  Global Food Security. 43, 100805, 1-6.
• Brown, T., Datta, K. et al, (2024) ‘Caring for children with SAM: Intersectional stories of shame, blame and stigmatisation in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Kenya, Global Public Health; DOI: Full article: Caring for children with SAM: Intersectional stories of shame, blame and stigmatisation in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Kenya
• Brown, T.; Datta, K. et al (2024) Convalescing from SAM: The pitfalls and possibilities of caring for vulnerable children in Harare’s high-density neighbourhoods, Social Science and Medicine, 359, 1-9.
• Lindley, A., Datta, K.; Chase, E., Hammond, L., Fadal, K., Loureiro, G., Majeed-Hajaj, S. (2024) ‘Migration and remittance patterns in a context of mobile global crisis/crises: exploring resilience and its limits.’ International Migration Review.
• Lim, I. and Datta, K. (2024) ‘Changing practices of providing (financial) care: Gender, digital access and remittances during COVID-19,’ in M. McAuliffe and C. Bauloz (Eds), Research Handbook in Migration, Gender and Covid-19, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• De Gruchy, T.; Vearey, J.; Datta, K.; Chase, E.; Musariri, L. and Orcutt, M. (2024) ‘The covidisation of migration and health research: Understanding the implications of the pandemic on the field,’ in M. McAuliffe and C. Bauloz (Eds) Research Handbook in Migration, Gender and Covid-19, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• Datta, K. and Bastia, T. (2024) Migration, intersectionality and the SDGs: Unrealised potentials? in N. Piper and K. Datta (Eds) Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Datta, K.; Brown, T. and Mutambasere, T. (2024) Migration, food (in)security and the Sustainable Development Goals: Insights from the Global South and North, in in N. Piper and K. Datta (Eds) Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Chagwena DT, Fernando S, Tavengwa NV, Sithole S, Nyachowe C, Njovo H, Datta K, Brown T et al. (2023) Formulation and acceptability of local nutrient‐dense foods for young children: A formative study for the Child Health, Agriculture and Integrated Nutrition (CHAIN) Trial in rural Zimbabwe. Maternal and Child Nutrition; 10.1111/mcn.13605
• Smith LE, Chagwena DT, Bourke C, Robertson R, Fernando S, Tavengwa NV, Cairns J, Ndhlela T et al. (2022) Child Health, Agriculture and Integrated Nutrition (CHAIN): protocol for a randomised controlled trial of improved infant and young child feeding in rural Zimbabwe. BMJ Open vol. 12, (12) 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056435.
• Bastia, T.; Datta, K.; Hujo, K.; Piper, N. and Walsham, M. (2022) Reflections on intersectionality: a journey through the worlds of migration research, policy and advocacy, Gender, Place & Culture, DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2022.2126826
• Brown, T.; Datta, K. and Fernando, S. (2022) Gender, caring work, and the embodiment of kufungisisa: promoting mental health in rural Zimbabwe, Health and Place, 78: DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2022.102935.
• Datta, K. (2022) ‘Skilled migration, education and development,’ in A. North and E. Chase (Eds) Education, Migration and Development: Critical Perspectives in a Moving World. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Fernando S, Brown T, Datta K, Chidhanguro D, Tavengwa NV, Chandna J, Munetsi E, Dzapasi L et al. (2021). The Friendship Bench as a brief psychological intervention with peer support in rural Zimbabwean women: a mixed methods pilot evaluation. Cambridge Prisms Global Mental Health vol. 8, 10.1017/gmh.2021.32
• Datta, K. and Guermond, V. (2020) Remittances in times of crisis: Reflections on labour, social reproduction and digitisation during Covid-19, Antipode Interventions. Available at: https://antipodeonline.org/2020/06/18/remittances-in-times-of-crisis/.
• Datta, K. and Guermond, V. (2020) 'Financialization and/or migrant labour,' in P. Mader, D. Mertens and N. van der Zwan (Eds) Handbook of Financialization, Routledge.  
• Datta, K. and Aznar, C. (2019) The space-times of migration and debt: re-positioning migrants’ debt and credit practices and institutions in, and through, London. Geoforum, 98: 300-308.
• James, A.; Datta, K.; Pollard, J. and Akli, Q. (2018) Building financial resilience: Migrant economies of charitable giving, Financial Geography Working Paper 19, Fin Geo Network.
• Datta, K. (2016) ''Mainstreaming' the 'alternative'? The financialization of transnational migrant remittances,' in R. Martin and J. Pollard (Eds) Handbook of the Geographies of Money and Finance, Edward Elgar.
• Pollard, J.; Datta, K.; James, A and Akli, Q. (2015) Islamic charitable infrastructure and giving in East London: Everyday economic-development geographies in practice, Journal of Economic Geography, DOI: 10.1093/jeg/lbv020 

Supervision

I welcome applications from postgraduate students wishing to work on projects aligned with my current research. I am particularly interested in supervising work on (i) gendered climate im/mobilities and remittances as climate finance; (ii) migrants food geographies ranging from food insecurity and hunger to food cultures and dietary transitions; (iii) digital diasporas and transformation of food and remittance practices.  

Current and previous PhD students

• Louisa Brain, (with William Monteith), Navigating im/mobilities and environmental change in western Kenya. (Leverhulme Doctoral College Studentship).
• Anna Finiguerra (with Jef Huysman) Ecologies of Visibility: Assembling the Politics of Mobility through Multiple Practices of Knowledge Production. (Leverhulme Doctoral College Studentship).
• Nuni Vieira Jorgensen (with Rachel Humphries, Marcia Vera Espinoza) Out of sync: Transnational Venezuelan families facing multi-sited temporal uncertainties. (Leverhulme Doctoral College Studentship).
• Danai Avgeri, (with Simon Reid-Henry), Governing migration, rebordering Europe: Space, law and time in Greece's "refugee crisis". (QM Principal's Award).
• Theo Barry-Born, (with Jon May), Over-crowded: volumetric urban politics and migrant rental housing precarity in London. (ESRC studentship).
• Shabna Begum, (with Alastair Owens), Exploring diasporic home making in the context of the Bengali Squatters Movement in London, 1976-1978. (QM Principal's Award).
• Kavita Dattani, (with Philippa Williams), Sexuality in the digital city: Pleasure, violence and solidarity in women's lives in Mumbai. (ESRC 1+3 studentship).
• Jenni Doyle (with Alastair Owens and Runnymede Trust), Transmitting In/equality Across Borders: Shifting Inheritance Practices and Outcomes among Indian Migrants in London. (ESRC CASE Studentship).
• Salome Wanjiku Kimani (with William Monteith) Everyday experiences of digital finance among market traders in Nairobi. (Self-funded).
• Vincent Guermond, (with Al James) Neoliberalising migrant finance? The financialisation of remittance recipients in Senegal and Ghana. (QM Principal's Award).
• Amy Horton, (with Jane Wills), Financialisation of Care: Investment and Organising in the UK and US. (ESRC Studentship).
• Suzane Solley, The widowisation of poverty in Nepal. (ESRC Studentship).
• Joshua Phillips (with Al James), Exploring the geographies of credit amongst entrepreneurial new migrant groups in London (QM Principal’s Award).
• Camille Aznar, Risk, financial exclusion and migrant workers in London (ESRC-CASE Studentship).
• Binh Tran, The role of civil society in natural resource management in Vietnam, (QM Principal's Award).
• Amy Norman, Continuity and Change in the Time of AIDS: Reconceptualising Childhood in KwaZulu-Natal. (QM Principal's Award).
• Edlam Aberra, Livelihood Sustainability amongst Pastoral Women and Men in Peri-Urban Yabello, Southern Ethiopia. (QM Principal's Award).

Public Engagement

I have engaged in a diverse range of public engagement activities.

Forthcoming

In May 2025, my collaborators and I will be launching our Co-Designed Massive Open Online Collaboration (Co-MOOC). The Co-MOOC emerges from a series of interdisciplinary and collaborative projects (see below), responding to the enduring hierarchies in migration studies by offering a participatory platform grounded in co-production, ethics of care, and creative collaboration. More details to follow.

Recent activities

Supported by a QM Policy Secondment scheme, I collaborated with Newham Community Project and Newham Council on a knowledge exchange project, International students in a post pandemic cost of living crisis. This entailed working with community and third sector organisations to (i) evidence lived experiences and multiple intersecting vulnerabilities that international students face; (ii) building on this evidence, and in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, co-develop a community of practice to better support international students; (iii) leverage opportunities to lobby for international students.

Initial findings and reports can be accessed below:

International students in a post-pandemic cost of living crisis.pdf (0.3 MB) [PDF 309KB]

QM NC NCP Workshop 1 Findings Full Report.pdf (0.4 MB) [PDF 449KB]

The findings of my collaborative ESRC project, Connecting through Covid, underpinned several outputs designed to reach a wider audience including a short animation, ‘Connecting during Covid,’ an ‘appearance’ on BBC Radio 4, Money Box, to speak about Migrant remittances, and World Bank ‘People Move’ Blog: ‘Shifting contours of care: How UK Indian diasporas give and receive care in the time of Covid-19.’ We also hosted a teacher conference organised by the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers, developing a series of resources on migration and diasporas; remittances and the impact of the pandemic on migration and remittances.

As a Co-I on the London International Development Centre's Migration Leadership Team funded by the ESRC and AHRC, I was part of a cross institutional team that developed a shared interdisciplinary strategic agenda for supporting the UK’s ESRC and AHRC, and wider UKRI-funded, migration research. Setting out proposals for the next five years (2020-2025), this strategy identifies recommendations about future agenda-setting and work priorities. It is the outcome of an inclusive consultative approach which entailed 'Global Conversations' with 450 participants including academics, practitioners, policy makers and representatives of migrant and refugee communities. Other key project outcomes are a short film, Life on the Move, which won the 'Best Social Media Short' category in the AHRC Research in Film Award 2019. We have also developed a Migration Research Support Tool to map UKRI funded migration research, allowing researchers, policy makers, funders and practitioners to see the scope, achievements and challenges of the UKRI migration funded landscape.

Convened international workshop on ‘Building equitable and effective partnerships in migration research: The Johannesburg Principles,’ with the African Centre for Migration and Society, Wits University. These were subsequently revised after Covid-19 pandemic.