Marsha is Lecturer in Gender, Development and Globalisation and Co-Director of the MPhil/PhD Programme in Gender She joined LSE in July 2009, having previously taught at University of Bristol, University of British Columbia, Canada, the Open University and Warwick University. She read English at the University of British Columbia, Canada, before studying for a Master's in Gender and International Development at the University of Warwick. She continued her postgraduate studies at Warwick obtaining a PhD in Women and Gender in 2001. Returning to her hometown, she carried out postdoctoral research in the Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Relations at the University of British Columbia, before returning once again to the UK in order to take up a position at the University of Bristol in 2002. Before taking up her post at LSE, she was a lecturer in the School for Policy Studies (2002-2006) and the Politics Department at the University of Bristol (2006-2009).

Dr Henry's LSE Experts entry is available here|.

Research Interests

Her research interests focus on three main research areas: gender, 'race' and health; gender, development and militarisation; and feminist, diasporic and qualitative methodologies. Her doctoral research focused on reproductive decision-making amongst middle-class women in India and her postdoctoral research was concerned with immigration medical exams in Canada. Over the past 5 years, her research interests have been concentrated on examining the social experience of living and working in peacekeeping missions. Her future research interests are to explore the experiences of female peacekeepers from the Global South.

Over a number of years she has been thinking and writing about the fieldwork challenges faced by the 'unconventional' researcher.

Recent Projects

Challenging Ethnographies- Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Bristol
Engendering Insecurity in Peace Support Operations, ESRC 2004-7 with Paul Higate, University of Bristol
Narratives of Disease, Disability and Trauma, Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia

Selected publications

Books

Higate, P and Henry, M (2009) Insecure Spaces: Peacekeeping, Power and Performance in Haiti, Liberia and Kosovo, Zed Press.

Selected Articles

Henry, Marsha (forthcoming 2010) 'Peacexploitation: Female Peacekeepers from the Global South' Globalizations (Special Issue on the Rescue Industry and the Global South), Paul Amar and Terrell Carver (eds).
Higate, P. and Henry, M. (2010) 'Space, Performance and Everyday Security in the Peacekeeping Context', International Peacekeeping, Vol 17, No 1, pp. *-*.
Henry, M., Higate, P. and Sanghera, G (2009) 'Power and Positionality: The Politics of Peacekeeping Research', International Peacekeeping, 16(4) pp467-482
Henry, Marsha (2007) 'If the shoe fits: Authenticity, authority and agency feminist diasporic research' Women's Studies International Forum Volume 30, Issue 1, January-February, Pages 70-80.doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2006.12.009 Henry, M. (2007) 'Gender, Security and Development' Conflict, Security and Development, Vol. 7, Issue 1., pp. 61-84.
Higate, P. and Henry, M. (2004) 'Engendering (In)security in Peacekeeping Operations', Security Dialogue (special issue on Gender and Security), Vol. 35 (4), pp. 481-498.
Thapar-Björkert. S. and Henry, M. (2004) 'Reassessing the research relationship: location, position and power in fieldwork accounts', International Journal of Social Research Methodology: Theory and Practice, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 363-381.
Henry, M. (2003) "'Where are you really from?" Representation, Identity and Power in the Fieldwork Experiences of a South Asian Diasporic', Qualitative Research, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 229-242.

Selected Book Chapters

Higate, P. and Henry, M (forthcoming 2010)'Militarising Spaces: A Geographical Exploration of Southern Cyprus' in Reconstructing Conflict: Integrating War and Post-War Geographies, Scott Kirsch and Colin Flint (eds), Ashgate, pp.
Henry, M. (2006) 'Knowledge Crossing Borders: Images of South Asian Women in Reporting on Sex Selection Practices', Asian Women: Interconnections, Tineke Hellwig and Sunera Thobani (eds), Women's Press (Toronto), pp. 223-247.
Henry, M. (2003) 'Investing in Mothering: Reproduction, Sex-Selective Technologies and Biological Capital in an Indian Case Study', in Debating Biology: Sociological Reflections on Health, Medicine and Society Simon J. Williams, Gillian Bendelow and Lynda Birke (eds), Routledge, pp. 185-197.

Research Reports

Higate, P and Henry, M. (2006) 'Between Warrior and Humanitarian Security: Perceptions of Past and Present Peacekeeping in Liberia' Chatham House.

PhD Supervision

Marsha is interested in supervising students working on topics related to: gender, health, development, peacekeeping, security, militarisation, and feminist methodologies. Please see our PhD page| for how to apply and what we are looking for in a research proposal.