Ina Zharkevich

Belarus

MPhil Development Studies, 2009
St Cross College
Funding: Weidenfeld

Ina was one of the inaugural Weidenfeld Scholars, graduating with an MPhil in Development Studies in 2009. Prior to coming to Oxford, she graduated from Belarus State University in Minsk with a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs in 2007.

It was during her MPhil studies that she first went to Nepal, where she has been conducting anthropological research over the past ten years, focusing on issues around the Maoist civil war, international migration, and religious practice. For her DPhil in Development Studies (Oxon), Ina conducted long-term fieldwork in the former capital of the Maoist base area, looking at how the Maoist People’s War profoundly transformed Nepali society within a period of less than ten years, and how revolutionary ideas and practices became adopted and normalised in people’s everyday lives. She is currently working on a monograph based on this research.

At the moment, Ina is a Lecturer at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. Ina’s research focuses on international migration in Nepal, the relationship between remittances, migrants’ debt, and relatedness in transnational family networks, and the phenomenon of debt-driven irregular migration, primarily to the US. As a side project, project, Ina started developing an interest in shamanism and a recent wave of Christian conversions in Nepal.

Ina also worked on Young Lives Project, a longitudinal study on childhood poverty in India, Ethiopia, Peru and Vietnam, and on a project on civil society in fragile states in the past.

Ina is based in Oxford, UK.