ALLEGANY, N.Y. — The women’s studies program at St. Bonaventure University will welcome Dr. Binitha V. Thampi to campus April 5-6 as the keynote speaker for this year’s Mary Devereux Lecture.

Thampi’s areas of research, particularly in her home state of Kerala, India, include gender and development; gender and migration; state welfarism and citizenship; and poverty, social exclusion and marginalization. Thampi will visit St. Bonaventure from Rutgers University, where she is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies this year.

Thampi will deliver the keynote address at the Devereux Lecture at 4:30 p.m. April 5 in the auditorium of the William F. Walsh Science Center on campus. The title for her address, which is free and open to the public, is “Migration, Aesthetic Labour and the Citizenship — A Case of Northeastern Migrant Women to Southern Cities of India.”

On April 6, Thampi will be the speaker at the Thursday Forum for university faculty and staff. The luncheon begins at 11:30 a.m. in the University Club. Thampi will discuss “Engendering Development: Debates and Issues in the Context of Global South.”

Thampi will discuss research on gender and development, particularly through the relationship between feminist theory and the praxis around gender and development; understanding women’s work; and the relationship between gender and poverty. She will also discuss pertinent issues in the contemporary Indian context where policy interventions are required to attain a gender just society.

Thampi earned a doctorate in development studies from the Institute for Social and Economic Change in Bangalore, India.