PERSONAL DETAILS

Sarah White: Director of Centre for Development Studies
Lecturer in Developmental Sociology

Telephone: +44 1225 385298
Fax: +44 1225 383423
E-mail Address: s.c.white@bath.ac.uk

Postal Address:
Department of Economics & International Development,
University of Bath, Bath
BA2 7AY, United Kingdom

PROFILE

Sarah White is Director of the Centre for Development Studies at the University of Bath (2002-). She is member of the Management Team of WeD, the ESRC funded Research Group into Wellbeing in Developing Countries, 2002-2007. She is also a member of the WeD Bangladesh team. With Joe Devine, she holds a research grant into culture, values and wellbeing in Bangladesh and India, under the University of Birmingham DFID funded research programme on Religion and Development (2005-10). She is Unit of Assessment leader for the University of Bath’s Development Studies RAE 2008 submission.
Sarah joined the University of Bath in 1999 after teaching at the universities of East Anglia and Edinburgh. A lecturer in the Sociology of Development, her main interest is in the ways that social identities, culture and relationships are implicated in development processes. She has worked as a short-term consultant to development agencies such as Oxfam, the Red Cross, Save the Children and DFID in the areas of gender and development, disaster preparedness and response, children's participation and reproductive health. Her PhD on gender and class in rural Bangladesh was published by Zed Books in 1992. In 1997 she published a further book, this time co-authored, on Theology and Development. More recent publications concern culture and wellbeing; race; and children’s rights and participation.

Sarah White's main teaching concerns the dynamics of social change and the politics of the development policy process. This draws on her practical experience of research and development practice in addition to secondary academic resources. To enable students to gain a deeper understanding of unfamiliar contexts she encourages the reading of fiction and uses feature and documentary films alongside standard social science texts in her courses. She is currently supervising 5 PhD students, who are working on issues concerning childhood and youth or religion. She is member of the Global Programme Advisory Group of the DFID funded Research Programme Consortium: ‘Pathways of Women’s Empowerment,’ hosted by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK.

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