Hello again from Dhaka! I wanted to share a bit of my findings in my final post for the Summer (which ended up actually being Fall — sorry Laura!!) I mentioned in my last post that there were two cyclones: Amphan and Yaas, that affected the Sundarbans during the first two years of the COVID-19 […]

The past few weeks I’ve been preparing to finally head to Bangladesh and spend a few months doing research there this year, and I have learned on major lesson: fieldwork during a global pandemic takes an extraordinary amount of effort and determination. I was one of many people who were meant to begin fieldwork at […]

Hi everyone, I’m Raka, a rising fifth year (wow that goes fast) in the Sociology department at Penn. I was supposed to begin my fieldwork last year in India and Bangladesh but due to COVID, like many of you, this has been on hold. I’m really excited to be a part of the CASI community […]

To get to the Bangladeshi Sundarbans, I usually drive from my grandfather’s home in Calcutta to the Vomra Border. Inevitably, I get stuck at the border as foreign passport-holders travel over land so rarely. This year the head officer on the Bangladeshi side bought me a coconut full of water. He remembered me from my […]

Hello from Kolkata! For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Raka Sen. I’m a rising third year in the Sociology PhD program (CAS). My research is in the Sundarbans in both India and Bangladesh — where I’m studying the gendered dimensions of climate change adaptation at a household level. I’m currently in Calcutta, […]