Riya Raphael

Background

In 2021 I completed my PhD with the dissertation, Circles of value: A study of working lives of informal sector traders in Delhi, India. Through this research endeavour, I analysed how intersectional hierarchies seep into global value chains. While informal recyclers remain invisibilised within research, they play a crucial role within the local, regional and global flows of goods and end-of-life material.

My bachelor’s degree is in political science from Kirori Mal College, Delhi University, India. My master’s education involved one year of training in sociology at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, followed by a master’s degree in Global Studies from the Graduate School, Lund University (LU).

Research Areas

• Labour and intersectionality
• Waste, discard studies, informal recyclers
• Feminist political economy
• Postgrowth, degrowth, eco-social approaches

Ongoing Research and Teaching

In research, I am particularly interested in studying work, waste, socio-economic dimensions of global supply chains and continuing colonial dynamics within environmental and sustainability politics.

My postdoc (2022-2024) was within the interdiscplinary Postgrowth Welfare Systems project, funded by the Excellence Programme for Sustainable Development, Lund University. I had the opportunity to work with an interdisciplinary team of scholars from social sciences, economics, ecology and sustainability studies. In this project, we explored the possibilities of building environmentally sustainable and socially equitable welfare systems. My role in this project was to bring in ecofeminist perspectives on labour, care economies and anti-colonial perspectives on socio-environmental issues.

During my postdoc, I was also part of an initiative titled, ‘Commission on care-centred transformation to equitable, low-consumption societies’. It was organised by the Hot or Cool Institute, based in Berlin, Germany which is a public interest think tank that brings together researchers, practitioners, organisations, businesses and policymakers, to work on sustainability and societal issues. I was one of the consulting members for the report titled, ‘Economies that Dare to Care: Achieving social justice and preventing ecological breakdown by putting care at the heart of our societies’ (2023). I contributed with insights on the importance of including informalised, sub-contracted and low-income work within discussions on sustainable economies.

My current research project is titled, ‘Valuing waste and value of waste: Contestations and collaborations between waste pickers and producers’, funded by Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council) (2025-2026). Due to the exponential increase of waste, sustainable waste management models are being implemented across the globe such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). According to the EPR framework, transnational producers are responsible for sustainably managing the full life cycle of goods. However, in large parts of the Global South, the everyday manual labour of waste material recovery is done by millions of waste pickers across the globe. This project follows the emerging interactions between producers and waste pickers’ organisations to examine how they negotiate the changing valuations of waste at the stage of material recovery.

I primarily teach on feminist theories of knowledge, methods, social theories on labour, feminist perspectives on environment and sustainability, postcolonial and decolonial approaches.