Interests

Labor, gender, politics of development, South Asia, creative methodologies.

Current Research 

My interests are in the everyday politics of labor, life stories of workers, women and work.

Courses Taught 

• GEOG 2400: Economic and Social Geography
• GEOG 5501: Urban Spaces in the Global Economy
• GEOG 5802: Globalization and Environment

Select Publications

Books

• Dutta. M. 2021. Mobile Girls Koottam: Working Women Speak, Zubaan, New Delhi. The University of Chicago Press
• Nowak J, Dutta M, and Birke P (eds). 2018.  Workers' Movements and Strikes in the Twenty-First Century: A Global Perspective. Rowman & Littlefield International.

Articles

• Dutta, M., and K. McSweeney. 2023. Undergraduates' experience of Geography in US universities. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12623
• Dutta, M. 2022. ‘Kitchen, Farm, Room – Spaces of transnational feminist theorizing by working class women in India.’ Austrian Journal of Development Studies
• Bhaskaran, S., Dutta, M., Naidu, S.  2021. Flattening the Curve or Flattening Life? Public Service Announcements in the Pandemic Economic & Political Weekly
• Dutta, M. 2021 Becoming ‘active labour protestors’: women workers organizing in India’s garment export factories Globalizations
• Dutta, M. 2020. Workplace, emotional bonds and agency: Everyday gendered experiences of work in an export processing zone in Tamil Nadu, India, Environment and Planning A
• Dutta, M. 2019. ‘Becoming’ factory workers: understanding women’s geographies of work through life stories in Tamil Nadu, India, Gender, Place & Culture.
• Dutta, M. 2019. Turning Productive Failures Into Creative Possibilities: Women Workers Shaping Fieldwork Methods In Tamil Nadu, India. Geographical Review
• Dutta, M. 2016. Place of life stories in labour geography: why does it matter? Geoforum, Vol. 77, 1-4.
• Dutta, M. 2016. The Nokia SEZ Story: Economy of disappearances. Economic & Political Weekly. Vol. L1 (51), 43-51.

Editorial

• Global Labour Studies in the Pandemic: Notes for an Emerging Agenda

Book review symposium

• Antipode book review symposium organized by Madhumita Dutta Stories from a Migrant City: Living and Working Together in the Shadow of Brexit
   

Select Awards & Recognition

• EPA: Economy and Space Ashby Prize, 2020
• Lawrence A. Brown faculty fellow, Geography, Ohio State, 2018

Reports

• Sourcing Dynamics, Workers’ Rights, and Inequality in Garment Global Supply Chains in India by Dr. Mark Anner in collaboration with Dr. Madhumita Dutta, November 2019
  This report has argued that apparel global supply chains are characterized by growing power imbalances between finance capital and buyers that sit at the top of the chains and the suppliers and their workers at the bottom. The model suggests that buyers squeeze suppliers on price and suppliers squeeze workers on wages and working conditions. What this study found was considerable evidence of a price squeeze. Indeed, for products exported to the US since 1994, there has been a 63 percent decline in the real dollar price per unit paid by US buyers to Indian suppliers. 
• Good Land: Bad Bank - Deadlocking valuable land in unproductive industrial land banks in India. January 2019.