Raka Sen

Raka Sen

Raka Sen is a graduate student in the sociology program at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include the sociology of climate change, social resilience, cities, neighborhoods and disaster sociology.

Prior to beginning her graduate study, Raka was a Researcher at Rebuild By Design, a resilience initiative launched after Hurricane Sandy. At Rebuild she worked on a study of managed retreat in the Sandy region and studied how long term infrastructure projects develop over time. A Colorado native, she holds a B.A. in Sociology, Urban Design & Architecture Studies from New York University.

As a visiting research at ICCCAD, she aims to answer questions related to the shifting of occupations from agriculture to other informal work in cities for men, and changes in the landscape for gender relations in the Sundarban region of India and Bangladesh. Often, this shift results in women staying behind in disaster prone areas with chronic flooding to care for their families, households, and more recently, their towns. The absence of men has created space for women to take on new roles in their communities. Through this research, Raka aims to understand and record these changes and look for variances in behaviors across the India-Bangladesh border.