Rahul Oka

Biography

Rahul Oka is Associate Research Professor of Global Affairs and Anthropology in the Keough School for Global Affairs and the Department of Anthropology. He is a Fellow of Kellogg, Kroc, Eck, Ansari, and Lucy Family Institutes and the Environmental Change Initiative. Trained as an economic anthropologist and archaeologist, his primary research interests combine approaches from political economy, socio-ecology, and embodied health, modeling the evolution and dynamics of wealth, violence, inequality, and poverty in both past and contemporary societies. He has worked on the rise and fall of commerce and urbanism in the Indian Ocean with partners in India and Kenya, and on socio-political and health economies of refugee camps in East Africa, Europe, and South and South East Asia. Currently, he is working on two projects: a) the impacts of ongoing conflicts on collective trauma and exploring pathways for collective healing in Ukraine, and b) the initial and ongoing impacts of the recent collapse in global humanitarian systems on beneficiaries ranging from refugees in UN supported refugee camps in Northern Kenya.