Professor Maya Unnithan is a Social and Medical Anthropologist and Director of the Sussex Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies & Health (CORTH). Maya received a Ph.D (1991) in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and holds degrees in Sociology (MA) and Economics (BA Hons). She has taught at the University of Sussex since 1991.
Over the past thirty years Maya has been conducting research in India, with a particular focus on reproductive health and rights. Her long-term research in North-West India is on caste, kinship and gender inequalities further specializing in childbirth, infertility, sex selective abortion, surrogacy, migrant reproductive health, maternal health inequalities and sexual reproductive health rights. Her recent, ongoing work is on blood related conditions such as anaemia in India and on prenatal sex-selection among Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi families in the UK. External to the University, Maya has served as a member of the WHO steering committee on the impact of human rights-based evidence on maternal and child health (2012-2013) and as a member of the WHO expert meeting on Law, Policy and Human Rights in the Safe Abortion Guidance (2018). Maya is a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and member of Council. She is currently Chair of the Medical Anthropology Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute.