Vibhuti Ramachandran, global and international studies assistant professor, has been named a 2021 Hellman Fellow. The honor, which includes up to $50,000 in research and travel funding, supports junior faculty pursuing innovative work.

The funding will allow Ramachandran to complete her book manuscript, Producing the Trafficked Victim: Law, Prostitution, and NGO Intervention in India. Based on ethnographic research with non-governmental organizations and police, she’s exploring how an anti-trafficking campaign - funded by the U.S and driven by an NGO - is playing out in India.

“My research brings to light the tensions and collaborations between postcolonial law and state practices, neoliberal governmentality, and global humanitarianism, and how the marginalized women targeted by these interventions navigate and resist them,” she says.

She’ll also be working on a comparison between shelter-based detention of sex workers and immigrant detention, and the use of law by NGOs in the Global South. 

The Hellman Fellows program was established in 1994 with generous funding from Chris and Warren Hellman. Since its founding, more than 1500 junior faculty have received awards to further their research.