Doctor Rimple Mehta

Senior Lecturer In Social Work and Community Welfare,
Social Work & Communities

Biography
Contact
Publications
Projects
Supervision
Teaching
Media

Biography

Dr. Rimple Mehta has previously worked at the School of Social Work, Tata Institute for Social Sciences, Mumbai and School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She has studied Sociology, Social Work and Women’s Studies. Her doctoral work centered around the experiences of Bangladeshi women in Correctional Homes in Kolkata, India. She was a recipient of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (SYLFF) for the same at Jadavpur University. Her research and field engagements broadly focus on women prisoners, refugee women, and trafficking. She also engages with questions of borders, citizenship and criminology of mobility. She adopts an intersectional feminist perspective with a strong emphasis on questions of epistemology, therefore viewing ‘reality’ from intersecting positions of marginality. Her paper titled "So Many Ways to Love You/Self: Negotiating Love in a Prison" won the 2013 Enloe Award and was published in the International Journal of Feminist Politics. Her monograph titled "Women, Mobility and Incarceration: Love and Recasting of Self across the Bangladesh-India Border" was published by Routledge in 2018. She has worked with women prisoners in Mumbai, Kolkata and The Netherlands and with organisations such as Swayam and networks such as Maitree against violence on women in West Bengal.

This information has been contributed by Doctor Mehta.

Qualifications

Dphil Jadavpur University

Awards

SYLFF Leadership Initiatives 2017-11-14
International Visitor Leadership Program (Refugee and Migration Issues) 2017-04-02
Enloe Award 2013-09-13
SYLFF Research Abroad Award 2012-02-20

Interests

Criminology
Feminist Research
Honour based violence
Migrations and Borders
Mobility and Migration

Organisational Unit (School / Division)

Social Work & Communities

Committees

Equity and Diversity Working Party

Contact

Email:	Rimple.Mehta@westernsydney.edu.au
Phone:	(02) 9685 9774
Mobile:
Location:	EjD G 48 Parramatta

PLEASE NOTE: obtaining information from this Directory must be for the legitimate purposes of doing business with and within Western Sydney University, and must not be used for unsolicited bulk e-mailing (spamming) or similar purposes.

Teaching

Previous Teaching Areas

102390 Social Work Practice Methods 1, 2023
102393 Power and Marginalisation, 2021
102743 Theories and Knowledges for Social Work, 2020
102743 Theories and Knowledges for Social Work, 2021
400193 Human Services Intervention Strategies, 2020
400508 Working with Individuals and Families, 2020
WELF7031 Theories and Knowledges for Social Work, 2022
WELF7031 Theories and Knowledges for Social Work, 2023

Publications

Books

Ife, J., Mehta, R. and Tusasiirwe, S. (2024), 'Re-imagining Social Work: Towards Creative Practice', : Cambridge University Press 9781108436885.
Mehta, R., Thakur, S. and Chakraborty, D. (2023), 'Pandemic of Perspectives: Creative Re-imaginings', : Routledge 9781032020907.
Bandyopadhyay, M. and Mehta, R. (2022), 'Women, Incarcerated: Narratives from India', : Orient BlackSwan 9789354421884.
Mehta, R. (2018), 'Women, Mobility and Incarceration: Love and Recasting of Self across the Bangladesh-India Border', : Routledge 9781138039292.

Chapters in Books

Mehta, R. (2023), 'Mobility across borders, continuums of violence and resistance', Centering Borders in Latin American and South Asian Contexts: Aesthetics and Politics of Cultural Production, Routledge 9780367404826.
Chakraborty, D., Thakur, S. and Mehta, R. (2023), 'Introduction', Pandemic of Perspectives: Creative Re-imaginings, Routledge 9781032020907.
Mehta, R. and Briskman, L. (2022), 'COVID and social work voices from India and Australia : strategic and meaningful solidarities for global justice', The Coronavirus Crisis and Challenges to Social Development: Global Perspectives, Springer 9783030846770.
Bandyopadhyay, M. and Mehta, R. (2022), 'Introduction : carceral logics, gender justice, and resistance', Women, Incarcerated: Narratives From India, Orient BlackSwan 9789354421884.
Mehta, R. (2022), 'Time is on my side : negotiating space and time in prison', Women, Incarcerated: Narratives from India, Orient BlackSwan 9789354421884.
Mehta, R. (2022), 'How women negotiated gendered relief and rehabilitation in post-partition West Bengal', The 1947 Partition of British India: Forced Migration and Its Reverberations, SAGE 9789354792908.
Mehta, R. and Thakur, S. (2021), 'Re-searching and re-positioning the self and the field : investigating the nation-state through narratives from the borders', Methods, Moments, and Ethnographic Spaces in Asia, Rowman & Littlefield 9781786612489.
Mehta, R. (2021), 'Justice for those without rights : 'illegal' migrants and marginalized citizens in India', Handbook of Migration and Global Justice, Edward Elgar Publishing 9781789905656.
Mehta, R. (2019), 'Two steps forward, one step backward : a step ahead?', Migration, Gender and Care Economy, Routledge 9781138063679.
Mehta, R. (2015), 'From denied dependence to an acknowledged dependence : making caring research relationships a possibility', Imagine There Were No Humanities: Transdisciplinary Perspectives, Wydawnictwo DiG 9788371819384.
Mehta, R. (2014), 'The mango tree : exploring the prison space for research', Reflexitivity in Criminological Research: Experiences with the Powerful and the Powerless, Palgrave Macmillan 9781349478743.

Journal Articles

Mehta, R. (2023), 'A southern feminist approach to the criminology of mobility', International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, vol 12, no 2 , pp 1 - 12.
Mehta, R. and Aliverti, A. (2023), 'Southern perspectives on border criminology : introduction to the special issue', International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, vol 12, no 2 .
Mehta, R., Edenborough, M., Gale, F., Velayudan, S., Cherian, S., Briskman, L., Georgeou, N. and Nagarun, A. (2022), '"This group is my country" : Sri Lankan Tamil women's narratives of isolation and connectedness in Australia', Social Inclusion, vol 10, no 4 , pp 244 - 254.
Edenborough, M., Gale, F., Briskman, L. and Mehta, R. (2022), '"Unauthorised access to the soap dispensers" : holding space open for emancipatory social work practice', Advances in Social Work and Welfare Education, vol 23, no 2 , pp 90 - 105.
Mehta, R. (2021), 'About Love on a Small Island (Gap-e Asheghi)', Visual Anthropology Review, vol 37, no 1 , pp 202 - 206.
Bhatia, M. and Mehta, R. (2021), 'Representations of Bangladeshis and internal 'Others' in the Indian press : the cases of Felani Khatun, Zohra Bibi and the 'woman in red sari'', From the European South, vol 9 , pp 31 - 46.
Mehta, R. and Roy, O. (2020), 'Deportation of Bangladeshi prisoners from India : issues and challenges', Journal of Indian Law and Society, vol 11, no 1 .
Mehta, R. (2019), 'Barbed affect : Bangladeshi child brides in India negotiate borders and citizenship', Journal of Gender-Based Violence, vol 3, no 1 , pp 67 - 82.
Mehta, R. (2018), ''Illegal' Bangladeshis in Akhand Bharat : inscriptions of race and religion on citizenship', Economic and Political Weekly, vol 53, no 7 .
Mehta, R. (2017), 'Mobility across borders and continuums of violence : experiences of Bangladeshi women in correctional homes in Kolkata', Rapoport Center Human Rights: Working Paper Series, vol 2 .
Mehta, R. (2016), 'Borders : a view from 'nowhere'', Criminology & Criminal Justice, vol 16, no 3 , pp 286 - 300.
Mehta, R. (2014), 'So many ways to love you/self : negotiating love in a prison', International Feminist Journal of Politics, vol 16, no 2 , pp 181 - 198.

Other Publications

2023, 'Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Women in Prison: Pre-Prison Experiences and Post-Release Reintegration', Report
2019, 'Human Trafficking in Vulnerable Districts of India: National Report', Report

November 2017-July 2019: "Carceal Logics and Social Justice: A Dialogue between Practitioners, Scholars and Activists" supported by award from SYLFF Leadership Initiatives, Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research.

October 2017-October 2019: Lead Researcher for "National Research Study on Human Trafficking in India", Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India

March 2016 – June 2018: Researcher for a Harvard University South Asia Institute project "The 1947 Partition of India: The Demographic and Humanitarian Consequences"

February 2016 - January 2017: Researcher for a School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University project titled "Love, Law and Labour: Child Marriage in West Bengal. Focus of research carried out by me: Cross-Border Child Marriages along the Indo-Bangladesh border.