Apekshya Prasai
Biography
Apekshya Prasai is a PhD candidate the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she is affiliated with the Security Studies Program. She studies gender, conflict and social transformation with a regional focus on South Asia. Prasai’s dissertation, "Gendered Processes of Rebellion: Understanding Strategies for Organizing Violence," examines the gendered ways in which insurgents organize violence (i.e., their "Gender Strategies") and explains why some rebels conform to patriarchal norms while others radically subvert them. Presenting a novel theory of militant female activism, her work highlights the critical but neglected role women play in shaping the gender strategies rebels adopt. Her dissertation and other related projects draw on extensive data collected through ethnographic fieldwork among former Maoist rebels in Nepal and archival research in the Netherlands and across several digital archives. Combining semi-structured interviews, oral histories and rare primary documents, her research sheds lights on the social, especially, gendered processes of civil wars. Prasai’s research has received generous support from the National Science Foundation, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, US Institute of Peace, Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and various programs at MIT. Prasai graduated with a B.A. in Government and Legal Studies from Bowdoin College in 2016.
Biography
Apekshya Prasai is a PhD candidate the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she is affiliated with the Security Studies Program. She studies gender, conflict and social transformation with a regional focus on South Asia. Prasai’s dissertation, "Gendered Processes of Rebellion: Understanding Strategies for Organizing Violence," examines the gendered ways in which insurgents organize violence (i.e., their "Gender Strategies") and explains why some rebels conform to patriarchal norms while others radically subvert them. Presenting a novel theory of militant female activism, her work highlights the critical but neglected role women play in shaping the gender strategies rebels adopt. Her dissertation and other related projects draw on extensive data collected through ethnographic fieldwork among former Maoist rebels in Nepal and archival research in the Netherlands and across several digital archives. Combining semi-structured interviews, oral histories and rare primary documents, her research sheds lights on the social, especially, gendered processes of civil wars. Prasai’s research has received generous support from the National Science Foundation, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, US Institute of Peace, Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and various programs at MIT. Prasai graduated with a B.A. in Government and Legal Studies from Bowdoin College in 2016.