Motherhood in the Academy: How care, fieldwork, and institutional logics shape research-led teaching

About this episode

Shreyashi Dasgupta discusses the challenges and benefits of conducting field-based research as a new mother.

In this podcast, Shreyashi Dasgupta shares her reflections around the challenges and benefits of doing field based research as a new mother. She draws on both her own personal experiences and what she learned from interviewing fellow researcher mothers as part of a recent scholarship project. Shreyashi Dasgupta is an urban geographer specializing in housing, infrastructure, migration and governance in the global South. She is also the Outreach lead for Geography within her Department where she hopes to make the discipline more accessible and engaging to people from a wide range of backgrounds. Suggested Reading: https://developmentgeographiesrg.org/care-and-the-academy-2 Hope, J., Bastia, T., Cox, R., Jenkins, K., Lemanski, C., Mendo, T., Meth, P., Moeller, N., Okafor-Yarwood, I., O’Hare, P., Ray, C., & Williams, G. (2025). Don’t forget the snacks: Doing field research as a parent. In D. Hammett & N. Holmes (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Field Research (1st ed., pp. 129–138). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003404903-21 Price, M. J., & Hall, A. L. (2024). Situating reproduction: How becoming mothers impacts field work and why it matters. The Professional…

People in this episode

Guest: Shreyashi Dasgupta

Topics covered

• motherhood
• fieldwork
• research-led teaching
• urban geography
• academic challenges
• care in academia

Keywords

• motherhood
• fieldwork
• urban geography
• academic motherhood
• research challenges
• care in academia

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Liverpool

Books & works: The Routledge Handbook of Field Research, The Professional Geographer, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

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