Journal article · September 2026
Who Cleans the Master’s House? Social Reproduction of/against ‘international relations’
Published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies. Read article →
Political Violence - Conflict Studies - International Relations
Carina
Uchida
DPhil candidate in International Relations at Pembroke College, University of Oxford and Visiting Scholar at ETH Zürich.
My research examines the relationship between political violence, social reproduction and labour strategies, with a particular attention to armed organisations, rebel governance and civil resistance movements.
Research
Re-thinking security through the work that sustains political life.
My doctoral research develops a social reproduction approach to armed rebel organisations, asking how gendered divisions of labour shape rebellion, governance, and political violence.
I also work across international relations theory, political economy and conflict studies.
Research overview →Selected work
All publications →Book review · January 2026
Review of Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring by Shirin M. Rai
Published in International Affairs. Read review →
Journal article · Under review
Rebellion’s Hidden Abode: Typology of Social Reproduction in Armed Organisations
Under review.
Working paper
Rebellious Labour? Introducing the Social Reproduction in Armed Rebel Organisations (SRARO) Dataset
Current methodological and empirical project.
Background
Research shaped by academic and policy experience.
Alongside doctoral research, I have worked with the University of Oxford’s Global Security Programme, International Labour Organization and the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty).
More about me →About
Background
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 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 the University of 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.