Julia Kowalski

Assistant Professor of Global Affairs

Department: Keough School of Global Affairs

Area of Specialization:

anthropology of gender; gender and development; women's rights and human rights; global feminisms

Julia Kowalski is Assistant Professor of Global Affairs and a concurrent faculty member in the Gender Studies Program. A cultural anthropologist by training, she has been conducting fieldwork in north India since 2007, focusing on issues of gender, kinship, women’s rights, personhood, gendered violence, and institutional practices.

Kowalski’s research draws upon methods and theories from cultural, medical, and linguistic anthropology to understand how people work together across differences of culture, social status, and political commitments to create social change. Her current project examines how elite activists, middle-class female staff, and clients facing household violence debate the meaning of women's rights, via an ethnographic study of family counseling centers run by women’s rights NGOs.

Gender Studies Courses:

• Gender and Development
• Paradoxes of Human Rights