Dr Lorena Gibson

Dr Lorena Gibson is a senior lecturer in Cultural Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington.

Her PhD thesis, entitled Hope, agency and the ‘side effects’ of development in India and Papua New Guinea (2011), is a comparative study of exceptional women organising for social change through grassroots-level development initiatives in the context of urban poverty.

In India she worked with two organisations led by Muslim women from bastis in Howrah and central Kolkata. She is interested in how women organise collectively to create more meaningful lives for themselves, their families, and their larger communities, through education and income-generating activities.

She is currently extending her research interests to include how Muslim and Hindu basti-dwellers negotiate their urban environments.

For more details, see Dr Gibson’s profile.