Dr. Kathleen O'Reilly

Research Interests

Kathleen O’Reilly studies the social and environmental impacts of development projects, especially those working toward improvements in health through gendered drinking water, sanitation, poverty interventions. Her research is based in India, where she has worked for the past 14 years. Her earliest research focused on community and women's participation in drinking water supply management, and was followed up in 2008 with a study investigating drinking water sustainability after the project’s closure. The National Science Foundation supported research across 2005-2009 that explored the effects of development projects for the NGOs fieldworkers who implement them, and resulted in a better understanding of how global-scale development policies are locally transformed and spatialized through the actions of NGO fieldworkers. An NSF CAREER Award supports her current research into the causes and solutions to India’s rural sanitation crisis. It seeks insights into how village-scale and household-scale dynamics involving caste, class, and gender influence toilet usage and non-usage in rural India.

Selected Publications

• 2011 O’Reilly, K. “They are not of this house”: the gendered cost of water’s commodification. Economic and Political Weekly April 30, XLVI (18):49-55.
• 2011 O’Reilly, K. “We are not contractors”: professionalizing the interactive service work of NGOs in Rajasthan, India. Economic Geography 87(2): 207-226.
• 2010 O’Reilly, K. and R. Dhanju. “Your report is completely wrong!” (aapkii report ek dum galat hai!): Locating
  spaces inside NGOs for feedback and dissemination.” Human Organization 69(3):285-294.
• O'Reilly, K. 2010. Combining sanitation and women's empowerment in water supply. Development in Practice. 20^th Anniversary issue, 20(1):45-56.
• O'Reilly, K. 2010.Now is the time for the smart: Adapting and adopting neoliberal development, Antipode 42(1):179-200.
• 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.