Yamini Agarwal

Yamini Agarwal is a Research Fellow at Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi (MWF). A sociologist of education by training, her interests lie in urban marginality, gender and educational inequalities. Her doctorate was awarded in 2020 by Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, which analysed the intersections of identity and aspirations in religious minority schools in Delhi. She has also taught sociology in a Delhi college.
 
Her project at MWF-Delhi focuses on the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the education of underprivileged girls in a low-income neighbourhood in Delhi. The participants were interviewed at various stages between 2020 and 2022 to understand challenges they faced in their educational trajectories amid pre-existing vulnerabilities that only deepened during the crisis of the pandemic.

During her time at the Weizenbaum Institute, Yamini will work on analysing digital education markets and the push of digital learning. As shown in her project, digital markets appear to have compounded the fragilities surrounding the education of marginalised communities. She will also be working on the manuscript of her edited volume where contributing authors explore the myriad challenges caused by the pandemic on education.