Dr Penny Vera-Sanso

Overview

Biography

Penny started lecturing at Birkbeck in 2002 in International Development, going on to Director of the Social Anthropology programme at Birkbeck and served as the Gender and Sexuality Pathway Lead for UBEL Doctoral Training Programme. She was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (1998-2001), a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Canterbury, Kent (1994-1998), taught anthropology at Goldsmiths College (1988-90; 1992-93) and in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies, London University (1986-88). Alongside her academic career Penny has founded two housing co-operatives in north London.

Highlights

• Principal Investigator, Ageing, Poverty and Neoliberalism in Urban South India, 2007-10, an international, multidisciplinary project funded by cross-UK Research Councils programme, New Dynamics of Ageing

• Principal Investigator, Ageing and Poverty: the Working Lives of Older People in India', 2012-13, an international, multi-disciplinary project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

• Four centre-fold pages showcasing my research on older people's paid and unpaid work in Outlook Hindi Independence Day Special Issue, 2013, pp27-30

Qualifications

• PhD (Social Anthropology), University of London, Goldsmiths, 1994
• Joint Hons BSc Geography and Social Anthropology , University College London, 1985

Professional activities

Member Peer Review College, UKRI

Chair, Special Interest Group on Ageing in Africa, Asia and Latin America of the British Society of Gerontology, https://bit.ly/3mepA5o 

Co-Editor, Journal of Global Ageing

Editorial Board Member, European Journal of Development Research

Consultant, Care of Older Persons in South Africa Network (COPSAN) Global Challenges Research Fund Networking Grant with MICRA, University of Manchester and Universities in Southern Africa https://bit.ly/3sfsOJK 

Professional memberships

• British Society of Gerontology

• Development Studies Association

Honours and awards

• Fellow, Higher Education Authority, December 2009

ORCID

0000-0002-3163-399X

Research

Research interests

• ageing, ageism, intergenerational relations, gender relations, masculinity, informal economy, micro-credit, informal housing, demography

Research overview

I have thirty years experience researching later life in rural and urban India and have led international, multi-disciplinary research projects funded by five UK Research Councils. I take an historically informed, multi-scalar approach to understanding how relations of inequality (age, class, gender and caste) shape livelihoods and inter-generational relations (care, resource flows) and feed into local, national and international economies. My empirical research grounds my interrogation of the ageism embedded in academic theorising and public and policy discourses. I have worked closely with the Centre for Law, Policy and Human Rights, Chennai, India, with HelpAge International, HelpAge India, Pension Parishad, India and Age International. Current research interests include:

1.  working with a GCRF-funded Southern African network, COPSAN, researching later life care and carers, specifically Lesotho men's experience care and caring over the course of their lives. 

2. researching the impact of Covid on older street traders' livelihoods.

3. a critical analysis of the ageism embedded in demographic theorising.

4. a critical assessment of UN policies on older people, Sustainable Development Goals and the Decade for Healthy Ageing, focusing on their embedded ageism.

5.  intergenerational research on development and the life course in Freetown, Sierre Leone.

I work with a share my research with a wide spectrum of Non-governmental Organisations, research organisations and activists to support their advocacy work for older people in low and middle-income countries and have used pop-up photo essays, newspaper articles, documentaries and stimulated citizen research through a national level photo competition to reach the public and policy influencers and makers.

I have made two documentaries: The Forgotten Generation, 2014, and We're Still Working, 2014, English version, Hindi version 

I chair the British Society of Gerontology's Special Interest Group ‘Ageing in Africa, Asia and Latin America’.
 

Research Centres and Institutes

• Co-Chair, Working Group on Age, Care and the Caring Crisis, Birkbeck Institute for Social Research

Research clusters and groups

• Co-Chair, Working Group on Age, Caring and the Caring Crisis, Birkbeck Institute of Social Research
• Chair, SIG Ageing in Africa, Asia and Latin America, British Society of Gerontology
• Consultant, Care of Older Persons in Southern Africa Network

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions external to Birkbeck:

1

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

3

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

• EZI BEEDIE

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2011

  Title of thesis:

  Development Studies Research

  Awarded:

  2015

• MARIANNA VARGAS DE FREITAS CRUZ LEITE

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2010 to Sep 2013

  Title of thesis:

  Development Studies Research

  Awarded:

  2014

• CAMELIA DEWAN

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2013

  Awarded:

  2017

Publications