Dr Akanksha Awal

Akanksha Awal is a Social Anthropologist working on the anthropology of gender, education, and freedom in peri-urban spaces of Uttar Pradesh, India, and more recently in China. 

Broadly, her research explores intimacy as a site for political struggles. In her doctoral work, she investigated how college-going young women negotiate sexual and social freedoms in a peri-urban region in the state of Uttar Pradesh, north India. Her Leverhulme Trust postdoctoral research sought to understand how the state, in particular the police, responds to young people’s demands for greater freedoms. Akanksha did her graduate studies and postdoctoral work at the University of Oxford, where her research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust and St John’s College. 

Before joining Oxford, I worked as a journalist for the Financial Times where I covered protests against corruption from Delhi, which inspired my doctoral research. 

• “Love as Enjoyment: Hopelessness, Play and Desirable Futures in Ghaziabad, India” Cultural Anthropology. Accepted for publication in February 2025 issue.  
•  “Berlant’s gift: structuring femininity through a fear of loss” in Encountering Berlant: A Symposium, The Geographical Journal ed. Ben Anderson.  
•  “Pursuing Pleasure at Work: Friendship and Precarity at North Indian Call Centers” in Work, Society and The Ethical Self, ed. C. Hann. Berghahn.

Love, Intimacy, Education, Middle Class, Policing with a specific focus on Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.