Profile

Monica Biradavolu

Research Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology

  • Monica Biradavolu joined AU in 2010 after postdoctoral positions at Yale University and Duke University. She researches the structural determinants of health, an interdisciplinary focus that embeds health within economic, social, political and gendered power inequities and marginalization. She has done extensive ethnographic work over the past 6 years on HIV/AIDS interventions in southern India through Project Parivartan, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded research project based at the Center on Health, Risk and Society at AU. She is also interested in extending and applying insights from research in India to help develop interventions for HIV prevention in Washington D.C. To this end, she is collaborating with colleagues in the area to develop research programs to address the HIV epidemic in the metropolitan area. She also enjoys teaching the required qualitative methods course for M.A. students in Sociology.  

  • Degrees

    PhD, Sociology, Duke University
    MA, Sociology, Duke University
    BA, Sociology, University of Delhi

  • Languages Spoken:


    English, Hindi, Telugu
  • DOWNLOAD CV (PDF)

  • OFFICE

  • CAS - Sociology
  • Constitution - 210
  • Spring 2011 Office Hours: Mondays, 9 am-12 pm (Battelle-Tompkins, T-11)

  • CONTACT INFO

  • (202) 895-4971 (Office)
  • Send email Profile UserID

  • FOR THE MEDIA

  • To request an interview for a
    news story, call AU Communications
    at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities

Selected Publications

 2011 Reed, Elizabeth, Jhumka Gupta, Monica Biradavolu, Vasavi Devireddy and Kim Blankenship. “The role of housing in determining HIV risk among female sex workers in Andhra Pradesh, India: Considering women’s life contexts.” Social Science and Medicine, 72(5): 710-716.

 
2010 Blankenship, Kim M., Monica R. Biradavolu, Annie George and Asima Jena. “Challenging the stigmatization of female sex workers through a community-led structural intervention: Learning from a case study of a female sex worker intervention in Andhra Pradesh, India.” AIDS Care, 22(1): 1629-1636
 
2010 Reed, Elizabeth, Jhumka Gupta, Monica Biradavolu, Vasavi Devireddy and Kim M. Blankenship. “The context of economic insecurity & relation to violence and risk factors for HIV among female sex workers in Andhra Pradesh, India.” Public Health Reports, 125 (4), 81-90.
 
2009 Biradavolu, Monica R., Scott Burris, Annie George, Asima Jena and Kim M. Blankenship. “Can sex workers regulate police? Learning from an HIV prevention project for sex workers in Southern India.” Social Science & Medicine, 68(8): 1541-1547.
 
2008 Blankenship, Kim M., Brooke S. West, Trace S. Kershaw and Monica R.      
Biradavolu.  “Power, community mobilization and condom use practices among female sex workers in Andhra Pradesh, India.” AIDS, 22(Supplement 5): S109-S116.
 

Research Interests

Structural determinants of health (including stigma and health; law, policing and health)

Health as a lens to understand international development & globalization

HIV/AIDS

Ethnographic methods

South Asia, particularly India

Grants and Sponsored Research

 2010      American Sociological Association (ASA) Travel Award to attend the XVII World Congress of Sociology in Gothenburg, Sweden, 11-17 July

Professional Presentations

 

“Power, secrecy and stigma: Challenging sex worker stigma in an HIV/AIDS prevention project” at the International Sociological Association meeting, Gothenburg, Sweden, 10-17 July 2010 

“Structural interventions for HIV prevention: Lessons from a sociological study with female sex workers in Southern India” at the North Carolina Sociological Association meeting, Durham, NC, 12 February 2010

“Policy considerations for HIV prevention: Enrolling NGOs to regulate police powers” at the conference Sex, Rights and the Law organized by the aids2031 Social Drivers Working Group, and hosted by UNDP, ICRW and the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS to address the long-term AIDS response relating to gender, sexuality and human rights, Cuernavaca, Mexico, 23-25 February 2009.

“Responding to police violence against sex workers,” Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) Annual Meeting, New York, 10-12 August 2007.

“From being policed to policing the police: Sex workers mobilizing for lawful policing practices” presented at the Community Mobilization Meeting of the Avahan India AIDS Initiative (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), Hyderabad, India, 17-18 May 2007.

 

 

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