Dr. Kathleen O'Reilly

Research Interests

Kathleen O'Reilly conducts extended ethnographic research in the areas of critical development geography and political ecology. Since 1997 she has studied development projects operating in northern Rajasthan, India. She is interested in the ways that development interventions restructure social, environmental and spatial relations in communities and implementing organizations. Her research specifically focuses on the community and women's participation components of a drinking water supply project. A National Science Foundation Grant (#0523985) supports current research on constructions of gender inside NonGovernmental Organizations (NGOs) and their implications for project outcomes. She aims to contribute to understandings of how global-scale policies and plans are locally transformed and spatialized through the actions of fieldworkers working for NGOs.

Selected Publications

• O’Reilly, K. (forthcoming) “Now is the time for the smart: Adapting and adopting neoliberal development” Antipode
• O'Reilly, K. (forthcoming) “Combining sanitation and women’s empowerment in water supply.” Development in Practice
• O’Reilly, K. (in press)  “Modern Water for Modern Women: Questioning the relationship between gender, empowerment and participation,” in Engendering Integrated Water Management in South Asia: Policy, Practice and Institutions. Sara Ahmed and Margreet Zwarteveen, eds. New Delhi: Sage.
• O'Reilly, K. 2008. Insider responses: women fieldworkers and the implementation of gendered participation. In Resurreccion, B. and Elmhirst, R. (eds.), Gender and Natural Resource Management: Livelihoods, Mobility and Interventions. Earthscan, London.
• O'Reilly, K. 2007. 'Where the knots of narrative are tied and untied’: the Dialogic Production of Gendered Development Spaces in Rajasthan, India. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(3):613-634.
• O’Reilly, K. 2006. ‘Traditional' women, 'modern' water: Linking gender and commodification in Rajasthan, India. Geoforum, 37:958-972. 
• O’Reilly, K. 2006. Women Fieldworkers and the Politics of Participation. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 31(4):1075-1098.
• O’Reilly, K. and Crutcher, M. 2006. Parallel Politics: The Spatial Power of New Orleans’ Labor Day Parades. Social and Cultural Geography, 7(2):245-265.
• O’Reilly, K. 2004. Developing Contradictions: Women’s Participation as a Site of Struggle within an Indian NGO. Professional Geographer, 56(2):174-184.