Biography
Dr Saskia Zielińska is a Lecturer in Gender and Social Development in the Department of International Development at King's.
Saskia completed her PhD in Development Studies at the Department of International Development in 2024 where she researched adolescent pregnancy and multi-sided violence (institutional, structural, symbolic and interpersonal) in Ayacucho, Peru. Thereafter she completed a Post-Doctoral research position with the University of Sheffield working with Dr Rebecca Ogden on the AHRC-funded project Adolescent Parenthoods in Latin America, where they collaborated with research partners in Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico to facilitate participatory arts-based research methodologies to investigate the lived experiences of adolescent mothers.
She has been teaching at King's since 2020 where she has taught on various modules including Introduction to Development Studies, the Political Economy of Development of Latin America, and History of the Global Economy. Prior to completing her PhD, she also taught at UCL and at SOAS on several modules relating to the political economy and sociology of development, as well as violence and development. She has also completed a short-term research fellowship at Queen Mary, University of London on the ARPEC Project with Dr Doreen Montag and is one of the founding members of the online publication Feminist Perspectives.
Research
- Multi-sided Violence (SGBV, Structural, Symbolic, Normalised etc)
- Adolescent Pregnancy
- Abortion
- Sexual and Reproductive Rights
- Latin America (with a focus on Peru, Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico)
- Participatory and creative qualitative research methodologies
Saskia is primarily interested in how interlinking and overlapping forms of invisibilised violence (such as structural, symbolic, and normalised violence) produce harm towards and contribute to marginalisation of different social groups, examining how these harms are invisibilised and individualised in the context of capitalist patriarchy.
For example, her PhD research explored how the conceptualisation of adolescent pregnancy in Peru as the fault of individual girls making 'bad decisions' and engaging in 'risky behaviours' masks the multiple structural contexts of violence that contribute to adolescent pregnancy in the first place, and exculpates both state and society from the responsibility of ensuring that adolescent girls and young women can freely enjoy their sexual and reproductive rights.
Teaching
Undergraduate
- 4YYD0002 History of the Global Economy
Postgraduate
- 6YYD0002 Gender, Society and Development
- 7YYDN035 Topics in the Analysis of Emerging Economics
Further details
See Saskia's research profile