Work Overview
Chitra Nagarajan is an activist, adviser, facilitator, researcher, and writer who works to analyse conflict, build peace, and promote and protect human rights, particularly those of women, girls, and other marginalised groups, predominantly in West Africa.
She focuses on the following areas of work:
anti-rights movements;
civilian protection and harm mitigation;
climate, economic, racial justice (separately and together);
conflict analysis and sensitivity;
gender, peace and security;
gender-based violence (prevention and supporting survivors); and
social inclusion, particularly disability, gender and LGBTQIA rights and justice.
She integrates intersectional feminist principles, methodologies, and perspectives across her work.
During over fifteen years, she has worked with organisations such as adelphi, the British Council, Catholic Relief Services, the Center for Civilians in Conflict, EVA, FEMNET, Fòs Feminista, International Alert, International Crisis Group, International Organisation for Migration, Mercy Corps, NULAI Nigeria, Outright Action International, Oxfam, Save the Children, Social Development Direct, the Initiative for Equal Rights, Urgent Action Fund-Africa, and the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research
While the majority of her work has been focused on Nigeria and other countries in West Africa (specifically Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo), she has also worked on projects in China, Iraq, Myanmar, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, and United Kingdom.
Part of anti-fundamentalist, feminist, LGBTQIA rights, and peace movements for almost two decades, she balances her paid and unpaid activism and work. She does so via participation in grassroots movements, pro bono work for smaller associations and organisations, and involvement in organisational governance, for example through serving on the Board of several human rights organisations.
In addition to academic journal articles and book chapters, she writes for a general audience, including via Al Jazeera, Daily Trust, openDemocracy, Premium Times, Reuters, The Guardian, The New Humanist, and This is Africa, and shares her analysis on radio and TV. Her writing focuses on documenting the lived realities of people who are often outside or deliberately erased from mainstream discourse and engaging in analysis and knowledge production to inform public narratives, urge political action, and contribute towards building the archive of the future. She believes that the future depends on what we do and make now - whether that is through our present-day activism or what we read and write forwards into our shared historical memories of the recent past.
She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer Women Speak, a collection of narratives which she co-edited, was published by Cassava Republic Press in 2018 and has been instrumental as part of a wave of cultural activism in shaping public conversations on queerness in Nigeria. The forthcoming The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict, which foregrounds the realities of people living through this violent conflict in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, will be published in April 2025.
areas of work
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analysing conflict
Chitra Nagarajan conducts conflict analysis and research, including on climate security, civilian protection, gender, peace and security, and security force action.
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building peace
Chitra Nagarajan works with peacebuilding organisations, particularly on civilian-security force dialogue, gender and social inclusion transformative approaches, and MEL processes
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defending human rights
Chitra Nagarajan is part of movements against fundamentalism and for LGBTQIA rights and climate, economic, gender, and racial justice.