PROFILE
Gauri is finishing up her PhD in Anthropology and Sociology, and has worked as a Teaching Assistant in both the ANSO and MINT departments for almost four years. She has also organised workshops with colleagues in the International History and Politics department to foster greater methodological and theoretical exchange within historical sociology. Prior to her PhD, Gauri completed a Masters in Development Studies and a shortened Masters in ANSO (as part of the Fast-Track) at the Institute. She read Economics and Sociology in her undergraduate studies at Ashoka University, India.
PHD
PhD Thesis Title: The British National Health Service and its Indian Doctors: Three Essays on the Colonial-Welfare Nexus
PhD Supervisor : Dr Graziella Moraes Dias Da Silva
Expected completion Date: 2026
This thesis situates the British NHS within a colonial-welfare nexus, positing that colonial relationships and linked policy infrastructures enable the extraction of resources and racialised colonial labour to staff the NHS well beyond the end of formal colonisation. It comprises a longitudinal mixed-methods qualitative design (1945-2025), analysing how colonial relations structured the NHS at its inception, and how the organisation governs the incorporation of racialised professionals within it through shifting conceptions of ‘skill’ and ‘competence’. These shape the ways in which professionals experience, resist and justify their career pathways, highlighting the racialised social construction of ‘neutral’ ideas such as ‘high skill’ and professional recognition.
Research interests
- Race and Ethnicity
- International Migration
- Interethnic Relations
Selected publications and Works
- Benazzo, Michele and Gauri Saxena. Forthcoming. Minorities and the Making of Postcolonial Europe. Routledge: Oxfordshire.
- Saxena, Gauri. 2025. “British Culture after Empire: Race, Decolonisation and Migration Since 1945”. Book Review.