Sara Stevano is a feminist political economist specialising in the study of work, well-being, households and development. She is currently a Research Associate in the Department of European and International Studies at King’s College London.

Her research explores how gender, class and race relations shape the organisation of paid and unpaid work, particularly observing households and everyday practices. Contextualising the everyday life of households in the global political economy, she is interested in bridging micro-macro divides and unpacking global-local relations. Working at the intersections between political economy, feminist economics and anthropology, she takes an interdisciplinary approach to theories and methods.

She was trained in Economics at SOAS University of London (MSc, PhD) and worked as a Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She is currently conducting research on the ESRC Rebuilding Macroeconomics projects on ‘Opening the Black-Box of the Household in Macroeconomic Policy’ with Dr Johnna Montgomerie (KCL) and Dr Ryan Davey (University of Bristol).

Research interests

• Political economy of work
• Political economy of well-being (food, nutrition)
• Households
• Social reproduction
• Development policy
• Research methods for heterodox economics and political economy

Current projects and research

• ESRC Rebuilding Macroeconomics, ‘Opening the Black-Box of the Household in Macroeconomic Policy’, European and International Studies Department, King’s College London
• Co-coordinator of IIPPE Social Reproduction Working Group
• Research affiliate at the Institute of Social and Economic Studies (IESE), Mozambique
• Affiliate at Centre of Labour and Global Production at Queen Mary University of London https://www.qmul.ac.uk/busman/research/research-centres/clgp/

Latest publications

• Stevano, S. (2019). The Limits of Instrumentalism: Informal Work and Gendered Cycles of Food Insecurity in Mozambique. The Journal of Development Studies, 55(1), 83-98.
• Stevano, S., Johnston, D. and Codjoe, E. (2019). The Urban Food Question in the Context of Inequality and Dietary Change: A Study of Schoolchildren in Accra, The Journal of Development Studies.
• Stevano, S., Kadiyala, S., Johnston, D., Malapit, H., Hull, E. and Kalamatianou, S. (2019). Time-Use Analytics: An Improved Way of Understanding Gendered Agriculture-Nutrition Pathways. Feminist Economics, 25(3), 1-22.
• Deane, K., Stevano, S. and Johnston, D. (2019). Employers' Responses to the HIV Epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa: Revisiting the Evidence. Development Policy Review. 37(2), 245-259. 
• Stevano, S. (2018) Social Reproduction and Women’s Work in the Global South, Journal of Agrarian Change Blog, 24 November 2018
• Johnston, D., Stevano, S., Malapit, H., Hull, E. and Kadiyala, S. (2018). Review: Time Use as an Explanation for the Agri-Nutrition Disconnect? Evidence from Rural Areas in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Food Policy, 86, 8-18.
• Deane, K. and Stevano, S. (2016). Towards a Political Economy of the Use of Research Assistants: Reflections from Fieldwork in Tanzania and Mozambique. Qualitative Research, 16(2), 213-228.

Book chapters

• Stevano, S. (forthcoming). Food Politics, in Sbaiti, M. (ed.) Global Health at a Glance, Wiley Press.
• Stevano, S. (forthcoming). Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa, in Mezzadri, A. (ed.) Marx in the Field, Anthem.
• Stevano, S. and Deane, K. (2017). The Role of Research Assistants in Qualitative and Cross-Cultural Social Sciences Research. In: Liamputtong, P., ed. (2017) Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences. Singapore: Springer Singapore, pp. 1-16. ISBN 9789811027796
• Stevano, S. (2015). Women Processing Cashew Nut: Reflections on Work, Investment and Gender in the Province of Cabo Delgado. In: Castel-Branco, C. N., Massingue, N. and Muianga, C., eds. (2015) Questions on productive development in Mozambique. Maputo, Mozambique: IESE, pp. 232-250.