Carina Uchida

Biography

I am a DPhil candidate at Pembroke College, University of Oxford and a Visiting Scholar with ETH Zürich’s Professorship for International Relations and Data Science. My doctorate is generously funded by the UK Research and Innovation Council, Department of Politics and International Relations and Pembroke College.

My doctoral project explores social reproduction, gendered divisions of labour and social control in armed rebel organisations. I conduct mixed-methods approaches towards understanding intimate and everyday labour that often sustains rebel groups. Specifically, I develop an original dataset of social reproduction across rebel groups, which, coupled with qualitative analysis of Latin American rebellions, provides a foundation for understanding rebel struggles as, partly, labour strategies. More broadly, I am interested in examining the limitations of traditional philosophies of labour and political economy, the relationship between care and (un)freedoms, and what it means to care for each other under conditions of political instability. My parallel strands of research involve social reproduction theory and how micro-level processes of maintenance are often subsumed under the so-called ‘international’, and what political implications are borne out of such invisibilisations.

Before and alongside doctoral research, I have worked in academic and policy settings. At Oxford’s Global Security Programme, we explored how changes in conflict, primarily in Colombia, Myanmar and Somalia, influence people-centred (in)security. Meanwhile, at the International Labour Organization and Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I focused on labour market analysis in highly feminised sectors, such as workplace harassment, garment and manufacturing sectors and the global value care chain.

Originally from São Paulo, Brazil, I completed my MSc in Latin American Studies at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford and a BA in International Relations at King’s College London.

When not at work, I can be found wild swimming, knitting, climbing, hedgelaying and, most recently, silver-smithing and metal-welding.