UO anthropologist Lamia Karim has landed a highly competitive fellowship that will free her to spend 10 months at Humboldt University's International Research Center in Berlin.

Karim, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, was recently named a 2016-17 Fellow of the center's "Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History" program commonly referred to as IGK re:work.

The fellowship begins Oct. 1, 2016, and will support her completion of "Becoming Labor: Life Cycles of Female Garment Labor in Bangladesh," a book focusing on women labor in the readymade garment industry in Bangladesh. That industry provides western markets with an abundant supply of cheap labor that has made the country a major supplier for numerous retail outlets.

Her book will show how the scope of women’s life cycles has changed during a 20-year work period.

“Although this factory work is extensively exploitative,” Karim said, “its social environment introduces new social roles that transform young women’s lives. Over four million rural-to-urban migrant women between 15 to 35 years work in this sector.”

Karim, a native of Bangladesh, has been at the UO since 2003. She also is affiliated with the Center for the Study of Women in Society, where she served as associate director in 2010-12.

IGK re:work each year invites senior scholars and postdoctoral candidates to apply for 10 to 15 international research fellowships.

For more details, see the story posted on the website of the Center for the Study of Women in Society.