Dr Ram was previously a Research Fellow of the Australian Research Council, and a Research Fellow at the Gender Relations Centre (Australian National University). Kalpana has published several papers on dance, and is currently working on a book concerned with female embodiment in rural Tamil Nadu which aims to address the ways in which reproductive disorders are experienced by women in ways that are very different from the rationalist intellectual discourses in India. Dr Ram’s main publications include 'Mukkuvar Women: Gender, Hegemony and Capitalist Transformation in a South Indian Fishing Village' (Allen & Unwin, 1991; republished by Kali for Women as a special Indian edition); 'Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific' (co-edited with Margaret Jolly, Cambridge University Press, 1998); 'Borders of Being: Citizenship, Fertility and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific' (co-edited with Margaret Jolly, Routledge, 2001). Kalpana uses phenomenology and its critique of rationalism in the context of contemporary postcolonial experiences in two different areas: Indian immigrant female experiences, particularly in the context of learning dance; and in the context of rural poor women in south India. Dr Ram has particular interests in the areas of (a) class, gender and development in India; (b) women's experiences of puberty and maternity; and (c) family planning and childbirth.