Dr. Ina Zharkevich

Biography

Ina is a social anthropologist working on issues related to the Maoist civil war, migration, and social change in Nepal. She holds a DPhil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford. Before joining King's College London, she was a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow and Departmental Lecturer at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford. Over the past decade, Ina has been conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the mid-Western hills of the Nepali Himalayas, which is the heartland of the Maoist insurgency civil war (1996-2006) and home to a vibrant and rapidly changing shamanic tradition. Her main research interests lie at the intersection of anthropology, violence, social suffering, and migration, focusing on transnational family networks, debt-driven migration, and the economies of hope in late capitalism. Ina has also developed an interest in the anthropology of religion, specifically in the invisible worlds and the work on 'reluctant shamans' and Christian conversion among indigenous groups in Nepal. She authored the book 'Maoist People's War and the Revolution of Everyday Life in Nepal' (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Research Interests