Biography
Hitesh Potdar is a PhD student in the Department of International Development at King’s College London, with secondary supervision from the Department of Geography. His research interests focus on technology and development, labour geographies, public finance, social reproduction, and critical urban theory. His PhD thesis examines spatial-temporal precarity in paid domestic work in India, exploring crises in social reproduction and the effects of platformisation technologies.
Hitesh holds an MA in Development Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai), where he investigated agrarian change and caste-related land issues in Maharashtra. He completed his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pune. With extensive experience in labour studies, Hitesh has worked on organising informal sector workers and contributed to projects on the gig economy, technological transformation in government processes, and agrarian studies. His background also includes experience with private consultancies and research organisations.
Research
- Social Reproduction Redux
Thesis title: Domestic Work, Platformisation and Social Reproduction in India
Hitesh's PhD research focuses on understanding the complex terrains of paid domestic work within the platform economy and their crisis of everyday life in general and social reproduction in particular. This study also focuses on the strategies that domestic workers employ to sustain their social reproduction and collaborate with unions/associations to resist exploitation under platforms.
PhD supervision
Principal supervisor: Dr Nithya Natarajan
Secondary supervisor: Dr Alex Loftus