After graduating from SOAS with a PhD in Social Anthropology, she began her career as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, as a member of the Participation Team and the Gender Working Group.
With Vera Schattan Coelho, she led a thematic cluster in the Citizenship, Participation and Accountability Development Research Centre on inclusion, rights and voice.
As the Pathways programme came to a close, she took up a temporary role as interim Head of School and found in it a new field of engagement for work on citizenship, participation, accountability and equity.
Appointed Head of School in early 2014, and serving as Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor Equality and Diversity from 2016 to 2017, she remained at Sussex until the conclusion of her term of office in August 2018.
She then joined London University's School of Oriental and African Studies as Pro-Director Research & Enterprise, moving to KCL in August 2022.
[2] Among the specific topics she has worked on are contraception from a woman's point-of-view; indigenous medical knowledge and women's experiences of infertility and sexually transmitted diseases in Nigeria and Zimbabwe; rights and social movements of sex workers in India and of domestic workers in Brazil; and the quality of democratic processes in Brazil.
), Zed Books, 2011 Novos Espaços Democraticos: Experiencias Internacionais, Andrea Cornwall and Vera Schattan P. Coelho (eds.
Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations and Challenges, Andrea Cornwall, Elizabeth Harrison and Ann Whitehead (eds.
Charlotte Morris, Paul Boyce, Andrea Cornwall, Hannah Frith, Laura Harvey and YingYing Huang, Researching Sex and Sexualities, London: Zed Books.
Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure, Susie Jolly, Andrea Cornwall and Kate Hawkins (eds.
The Beast of Bureaucracy and Other Tales from Valhalla, Andrea Cornwall, Katja Jassey, Seema Arora-Jonsson and Patta Scott-Villiers, Bath Press, 2007.