Vijitha Rajan
Areas of Interest & Expertise
- Sociology of Childhood(s) and Education
- Childhood(s) in Global South
- Educational Inequalities
- Education and Social Justice
- Migration and Education
Biography
Prior to joining the University in 2020, Vijitha was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Delhi (2015−2020). In 2018 – 19, she was a Commonwealth Scholar at School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, United Kingdom. Her doctoral research is on understanding educational exclusion of migrant children and foregrounds the discord between mobile childhoods and immobile schools in the Indian context.
Courses
Sociology of Education
How are the issues that surround education and its practices related to social processes?
School and Society
Develop sociological imaginations around questions of schooling and education
Curriculum Studies
The word ‘curriculum’ has its origin in the racing tracks of ancient Greece, to mean, quite literally, a course.
Articles
Publications and Writings
Ongoing Research Projects
- Trajectories of Education, Livelihoods and Social Mobility of Puroik Community: An Exploratory Study in East Kameng District (Arunachal Pradesh), Small Grant Research Project, Funded by Azim Premji University, Bengaluru.
- Education, Margins and City: Examining the Linkages through an Ethnographic Exploration (2021−2022). Early Career Research Grant by The Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures (TESF) anchored at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bengaluru. https://tesfindia.iihs.co.in/education-margins-and-city-examining-the-linkages-through-an-ethnographic-exploration/
Journal Articles
- Rajan, V. (2023). Migrant childhoods and temporalities in India: A reflective engagement with dominant discourses. Journal of Childhood Studies, 48(1), 30 – 43. https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs202320499
- Rajan, V. (2022). Review of the book [Children and NGOs in India: Development as Storytelling and Performance by Annie McCarthy]. Contemporary Education Dialogue, 19(2), 304 – 309. https://doi.org/10.1177/09731849221083737
- Rajan, V. (2022). ‘Shed’, ‘Shed Makkalu’ and Differentiated Schooling: Narratives from an Indian City. Third World Thematics. https://doi.org/10.1080/23802014.2022.2083768
- Rajan, V. (2021). Migrant childhoods and schooling in India: Contesting the inclusion-exclusion binary. Children’s Geographies, 20(6), 760 – 773. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2021.2015288
- Rajan, V. (2021). Migrant children and ‘free’ education in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 56(48), 18 – 21. https://www.epw.in/journal/2021/48/commentary/migrant-children-and-%E2%80%98free%E2%80%99-education-india.html
- Dyer, C., & Rajan, V. (2021). Left behind? Internally migrating children and the ontological crisis of formal education systems in South Asia. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1 – 18. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2021.19071758.
- Rajan, V. (2020). The ontological crisis of schooling: Situating migrant childhoods and educational exclusion. Contemporary Education Dialogue. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973184920948364
- Rajan, V. (2020). Educational exclusion of children of distress migrants in India: Some reflections. The Primary Teacher. https://ncert.nic.in/pdf/publication/journalsandperiodicals/theprimaryteacher/PT_Oct_2016.pdf
- Rajan, V. (2019). Gowramma’s ghost and Bengaluru’s ‘zero’ out-of-school children. Economic and Political Weekly, 54(40), 30 – 34. https://www.epw.in/journal/2019/40/insight/gowrammas-ghost-and-bengalurus-%E2%80%98zero%E2%80%99-out-school.html
- Rajan, V. (2018). ‘Stolen childhoods’? Observations on education of migrant children. Economic & Political Weekly, 53(11), 24 – 27. https://www.epw.in/journal/2018/11/commentary/stolen-childhoods.html
- Rajan, V. (2015). [Review of the book Inhabiting ‘childhood’: children, labour and schooling in postcolonial India, by S. Balagopalan]. Contemporary South Asia, 23(2), 223 – 224. https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2015.1033955
Book Chapters
- Dyer, C., & Rajan, V. (2020). Educating South Asia’s mobile children. In P. Sarangapani & R. Pappu (Ed.). Global Education Systems: Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia. Springer.
Reports
- Rajan, V., Dalal, J. and Anand, C., (2023). Education, Margins and City: Examining the linkages through an ethnographic exploration. TESF India and IIHS, Bengaluru. https://doi.org/10.24943/TESF1006.2023
Magazine Articles
- Rajan, V. (2020). Ethnography and Migrant Children: Perspectives and Challenges. NEOS: A Publication of the Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group. https://acyig.americananthro.org/neos/volume12issue1_2020/rajan_neos_12-1_april-2020/
- Rajan, V. (2019). Educational inequalities. Commonwealth Knowledge, Commonwealth Scholarship Commision, 8, 26 – 27.
Blog Posts
- Rajan, V. (2023, February 06). Politics of life and margins. Doing Sociology. https://doingsociology.org/2023/02/06/politics-of-life-and-margins-vijitha-rajan/
- Rajan, V. (2022, October 29). Sociological perspective, identity crisis and educational practice. Doing Sociology. https://doingsociology.org/2022/10/29/sociological-perspective-identity-crisis-and-educational-practice-vijitha-rajan/
- Rajan, V. (2017, April 08). How Indian classrooms have become more like factories and prisons. Youth Ki Awaaz. https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2017/04/beyond-the-temporality-of-our-classrooms/