I worked as an Associate Professional Officer for the UK’s Overseas Development Administration (now DFID), then as a free-lance consultant, before joining the School of Development Studies and the Overseas Development Group in 1995.

I have a BA in Social and Political Science from Cambridge University, a Masters in Development Studies from UEA and a PhD from the Centre for Development Studies in Swansea. 

My policy research and consultancy has focused on issues relating to poverty, gender, livelihood strategies, community organisations, local institutions and public administration in the sectors of natural resource management, especially agriculture and forestry, reproductive health and rights, migration, and ageing.

My current research has two themes. It focuses on the linkages between reproduction, wellbeing and migration in Vietnam; and on young people’s progress to economic empowerment in Zambia.
 

CV and Experience

Download Catherine's Consultancy CV here.

Download Catherine's Research CV here.

Gender and social analysis; rural livelihoods, reproduction and well-being; reproductive health, policy and rights; community-based natural resource management. India, Nepal, Tanzania and Vietnam.

Research Groups: Ageing and Development; Gender and Development; HIV and Development Group; Social Protection and Mobile Livelihoods

Research Activities

My current research focuses on reproductive lives, migration, youth, and life course analysis:

Migration, (social) reproduction and social protection
I am working with Janet Seeley (DEV) and Nitya Rao (DEV) and other members of the Social Protection and Mobile Livelihoods research group on an international conference for 2-3rd April 2012. The conference will ask: how can we understand and investigate the social protection needs and strategies of poor migrants and their families with respect to their marital, parenting and caring roles and relationships? The call for papers will be available shortly.

The linkages between reproduction, wellbeing and migration in Vietnam
I am working with Nguyen Thi Ngan Hoa of The Centre for Gender and Family Studies in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam of the Institute of Family and Gender Studies in Hanoi. Our research focuses on Linking Migration, Reproduction and Wellbeing: Exploring the Reproductive Strategies of Low-Income Rural-Urban Migrants in Vietnam and was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Department for International Development (DFID) between 2008-2010.

The economic empowerment of youth in Zambia
I worked with Arjan Verschoor (DEV) and Nora Dudwick (World Bank) to interpret the life histories of 60 young Zambians. This work was funded by the World Bank and explored the barriers and supports that young people experience in Zambia as they attempted to build economically successful lives. I am now working with Dolf De Lintelo (IDS, Sussex) on academic outputs including conference presentations and a manuscript for publication based on this data.

Recent work has been organised around the themes of reproductive history, reproductive rights, migration and gender analysis:

• Together with Peter Lloyd-Sherlock (DEV), I explored the influence of reproductive history on older women’s wellbeing in a low income neighbourhood of Buenos Aires.
• From 1999-2001, I received funding from DFID's Economic and Social Research (ESCOR) fund for a research project on ‘Wellbeing, Rights and Reproduction’.
• From 1999-2002, together with Neil Adger and Mick Kelly in the School of Environmental Sciences and Nguyen Huu Ninh at CERED in Hanoi, Vietnam, I received funding from the MacArthur Foundation’s Population, Consumption and Environment Initiative for research into ‘Migration and Social Resilience in Coastal Vietnam’.
• From 1997-1999, together with Christine Okali, I received funding from DFID’s Socio-Economics Methodologies Component of the Renewable Natural Resources Research Strategy to look at ‘Analysing Changing Gender Relations’.

 

Publications 

Forthcoming

2010

Locke, C. and Zhang, H.X. (2010) ‘A Better Life? Migration, Reproduction and Wellbeing in Transition’ in Society, Biology and Human Affairs (SBHA) - Special Edition: Space, Movement and Health: Biosocial Perspectives 75 (2): 51-71
 

2009

Locke, C. & Zhang, H.X. (2009) Missing Links Between Migration and Reproduction in Vietnam and China, Working Paper 14, DEV Working Paper Series, The School of International Development, University of East Anglia, UK
Link to Working Paper
 

2008

Lloyd-Sherlock, P and C. Locke (2008) ‘Vulnerable relations: Life course, wellbeing and social exclusion: Insights from older people’s narratives, Buenos Aires’, Ageing and Society. 28 (8): 117-1207.
Link to journal article
 

2006

Zhang, H.X., Kelly, P.M., Locke, C., Winkels, A. and Adger, W.N. (2006) ‘Migration in a transitional economy: beyond the planned and spontaneous dichotomy in Vietnam', Geoforum. 37(6): 1066-1081
Link to journal article
 

2004

Zhang, Heather Xiaoquan, and Catherine Locke, 'Interpreting Reproductive Rights: Institutional responses to the Agenda in the 1990s', Public Administration and Development 24 (1): 41-50.
Link to journal article
 

2002

Adger, W.Neil, P.Mick Kelly, Alexandra Winkels. Luong Quang Huy and Catherine Locke, 'Migration, Remittances, Livelihood Trajectories and Social Resilience', Ambio 31 (4): 358-366.

Locke, Catherine, and Heather Xiaoquan Zhang, 'Contextualising Reproductive Rights Challenges: The Vietnam Situation', Women's Studies International Forum 25 (4): 443-453.
Link to journal article

Locke, Catherine, 'Discursive Challenges: Reproductive Rights and Women's Well-being in Developing Countries' in G. Boswell & F. Poland (eds) Women's Minds, Women's Bodies - An Interdisciplinary Approach to Women's Health, Basingstoke: Palgrave. 
Link to publisher
 

2000

Locke, Catherine, W.N. Adger and P.M. Kelly, 'Changing Places: Migration's Social and Environmental Consequences', Environment 42 (7): 24-35.
Link to journal article

Locke, Catherine, and Heather Xiaoquan Zhang, 'Social Analysis and Selective Inclusions in Rights-Based Approaches to Reproductive Health', Journal of Anthropological Studies at Oxford - Special Edition on Fertility and Reproduction 31(3): 85-100. 
Link to journal
 

1999

Locke, Catherine, and Christine Okali, 'Analysing Changing Gender Relations: Methodological Challenges for Gender Planning', Development in Practice  9 (3): 274-286.
Link to journal article

Locke, Catherine, 'Constructing a Gender Policy for Joint Forest Management in India', Development and Change 30 (2): 265-285.
Link to journal article

Locke, Catherine, 'Women's Representation and Roles in 'Gender' Policy in Joint Forest Management' in R. Jeffrey & N. Sundar (eds) A New Moral Economy for India's Forests? Discourses of Community and Participation, New Delhi/London: Sage Publications, pp235-253.

 

I teach research skills, social development, gender analysis for social policy, and population and development issues at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels, as well as supervise research students.

I am currently supervising the following research students:

Lan Hoang; ‘Gender relations, intra-household power hierarchies and social norms in migration decision-making in rural Vietnam’

Emmanuel Nyamekye; ‘An Analysis of Water Vending by Women and Children in Northern Ghana and its Implications on Household Care’

Minh Nguyen: 'Servants of the Socialist Economy'

Geraldine Terry; 'Gender Aspects of Climate Change Adaptation in the Global South'