Shriya Thakkar

Ph.D., M.A., M.S.

Postdoctoral Associate

School: Milken Institute School of Public Health

Department: Prevention and Community Health

Contact:

Email: Shriya Thakkar

Milken Institute School of Public Health 950 New Hampshire Avenue, NW Washington DC 20052

Shriya Thakkar, PhD is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. She earned her PhD in Sociology from Louisiana State University in 2025. In her prior work, she focused on how structural disparities shape mental health outcomes, with particular attention to health inequities, gender, vulnerability, aging, and disasters in both the United States and India. In her current role, she leads and supports research projects that explore how social determinants of mental health--including substance use, interpersonal violence, and structural inequality--influence outcomes across diverse populations.

Education

Ph.D. Sociology, Louisiana State University, LA (2025)
M.A. Women & Gender Studies, Utrecht University, Netherlands (2018)
M.Sc. Anthropology, University of Delhi, India (2016)
B.Sc. Anthropology, University of Delhi, India (2014)

Publications

Selected Publications:

Thakkar, Shriya & Kevin T. Smiley. (2024). Overlooked Realities: Reimagining “Home” and “House” among Women Domestic Workers in India. Violence Against Women, 30(8):2053-2072.
Thakkar, Shriya. (2024). Exploitation, Harassment, and Violence: Lived Experiences of Women Paid Domestic Workers in India. Journal of South Asian Development, 19(1): 44-60.
Thakkar, Shriya, Muhammad, T., Shobhit Srivastava. (2022). Cross-sectional Associations of Frailty with Falls, Multiple Falls, and Fall-injury Among Older Indian Adults: Findings from LASI, 2018. PLoS ONE, 17(8): e0272669.
Thakkar, Shriya, Muhammad T., Chanda Maurya. (2023). An
Investigation of the Longitudinal Association of Mobile Phone Ownership and Internet Access with Intimate Partner Violence among Young Married Women in India: Findings from UDAYA. Journal of Public Health, 1-12..
Thakkar, Shriya. (2021). Moving Towards Empowerment: Migrant Domestic Workers in India. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies,
23(3):425-440
Thakkar, Shriya, Kevin T. Smiley, Michael O. Emerson. (2023). Where to live and who to live with? Examining neighborhood preferences for living with immigrants and urban form in Copenhagen, Denmark. Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban
Sustainability, 16(3):1-20.