Dr Somaiah has commenced a one-and-a-half-year appointment as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asian Migration cluster with effect from 3 January 2017.

She received her PhD in Sociology from Macquarie University. Her work is comparative, woman-centred and multi-sited, focusing on social reconstructions of first generation im/migrant mothering among an ethnic minority group of middle-class transnational cosmopolitans living in urban India, Singapore and Australia.  Her research interests include mothering, gendered experiences of migration, Asian diasporas, multiple modernities, intimate citizenship practices, circulation of care, sociologies of the body and feminist methodologies.

While at ARI, she is working collaboratively with an international research team on a mixed-method longitudinal study titled Child Health and Migrant Parents in Southeast Asia (CHAMPSEA): Wave II. The project is investigating the longer-term impacts of parental absence on children from sending communities of international labour. Her main fieldwork focus is Indonesia.