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M.Phil., Ph.D. (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)

M.A. (TISS, Mumbai);

Prof. (Dr.) Vidya Subramanian

Associate Professor

Email vsubramanian@jgu.edu.in
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Key Expertise Sociology of education; education policy and governance; entrepreneurship and technical higher education; political economy of education; gender and development; development studies; qualitative research methods (ethnography, in-depth interviews, content and discourse analysis).

M.Phil., Ph.D. (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)

M.A. (TISS, Mumbai);

Biography

Dr. Vidya Subramanian is a qualitative sociologist who studies social and political transformations in the field of education in post-liberalisation India.

Her research straddles two themes. The first theme explores how corporate philanthropy and non-profit organisations are pushing for technology-based and data-driven reforms in education. Her published work, a case study of Teach for India, showed how ideas originating in the corporate sector – enterprise, skills, and efficiency – were key to the development of the new common sense about reforming education. Her ongoing project follows the elite professionals staffing the non-profit organisations that steer such education programmes and build the case for more widespread technocratic policy reforms.

Dr. Subramanian’s second research theme investigates industry-university collaborations aimed at preparing engineering graduates for a rapidly changing job-market. It takes as its problem the increasingly outdated curriculum in engineering colleges that is unable to match industry requirements, and investigates the various policy measures aimed at creating an entrepreneurial culture amongst students. The project will outline what policies and practices best yield effective collaboration between industry-partners and engineering institutions to produce hireable graduates.

Her research has been published in the Economic & Political Weekly, Contemporary Education Dialogue, International Studies in Sociology of Education and Contemporary South Asia. She received her PhD and MPhil from the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, during which she was a doctoral fellow at the Transnational Research Group (TRG) of the Max Weber Foundation-German Humanities Institutes Abroad. Prior to joining the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy she taught at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and was a consultant to the Tata Trusts. She holds an MA in Development Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

  • Gender and Development
  • Education policy elective courses (focus on higher education, skills, entrepreneurship and governance)
  • Qualitative research methods
  • Introductory courses in social sciences for BSc/BA Economics students
  • Max Weber Stiftung/German Historical Institute London Transnational Research Group Doctoral Fellowship (2014-2017)
  • University second rank (Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala), BA Communicative English (2002-2005)
  • Melbourne Global Centre conference grant, 2025 (in collaboration with Amanda Gilbertson (University of Melbourne) and Joyeeta Dey (MAHE Bangalore))
  • Ministry of Human Resource Development, Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration, 2019-2021 (associated with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, in collaboration with the School of Education and Social Work, University of Sussex)
  • The Spencer Foundation conference grant, 2019-2020 (associated with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, in collaboration with Ahmedabad University, Rutgers University- New Brunswick and the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies, Bangalore)
  • United Kingdom-India Education Research Initiative (UKIERI) research grant, 2018 (associated with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)
  • Peer reviewer: Contemporary Education Dialogue, Sage journals
  • Peer reviewer: Journal of South Asian Development, Sage journals
  • Peer reviewer: Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Wiley journals
  • Peer reviewer: Jindal Journal of Public Policy
  • Editor for Teachers, Teaching and Teacher Education special section: Contemporary Education Dialogue, Sage Journals (2020-2023)
  • Comparative Education Society of India (CESI)
  • India Higher Education Research Network (IHERN)
  • Development Studies Association UK (DSA)
  • International Public Policy Association (IPPN)/India Public Policy Network
  • British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE)
  • British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS)
  • Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)
  • Science Technology and Society (STS) India
  • Co-convenor of the panel: Elite actors, technocracy and social stratification in the Global South: Navigating the hierarchies of “depoliticised” knowledge for development, at the Development Studies Association annual conference at University College, Dublin, July 8 – 10, 2026. (In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Sussex and Harvard University)
  • ‘Layering gender into the ‘thinking’ of public policy: Deconstructing case-studies through an interdisciplinary social sciences framework’, paper presentation at the India Public Policy Network annual conference, National Law School of India University Bangalore, June 8 – June 11, 2026.
  • Co-convenor of the international workshop: The Network State: Redefining State and Education in an era of Public-Private Partnerships, July 7-8, 2025. In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Melbourne and Manipal Academy of Higher Education Bangalore. (Funded by the Melbourne Global Centre conference grant.)
  • ‘Cooperation or Cooptation: Using the Right to Information to trace PPP regimes in the development sector in India’, paper presentation in the panel: Navigating exclusive spaces and novel methods: Responding to development’s private sector turn at the Development Studies Association annual conference at the University of Bath, June 25 – June 27, 2025.
  • ‘Efficiently disabling equity: Corporate philanthropy, fellowships and new elite professional networks in the development sector’, paper presentation at the workshop: Inequality and Elites in South Africa and India: Challenges, Debates and Possibilities conducted by the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, February 18-19, 2025.
  • ‘Channelling Compassion towards change: Elite volunteerism, corporate philanthropy and education reform in urban India’, paper presentation at the workshop: Fixing Policy: Private Players and Policy making in India conducted by the School of Public Policy, Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai in collaboration with the Kings College, London, August 14, 2024.
  • ‘Channelling Compassion towards change: Elite volunteerism, corporate philanthropy and education reform in urban India’, paper presentation in the seminar series at the Max Weber Forum for South Asia Studies, Delhi, August 25, 2023.

Subramanian, Vidya. (2023).‘Alternative visions of educating India’, review of Janaki Nair (ed.): Un/Common Schooling: Educational Experiments in Twentieth Century India, published in The India Forum: A Journal-Magazine on Contemporary Issues

Subramanian, Vidya. (2022). ‘Channeling compassion towards change: Elite volunteerism, Corporate philanthropy and education reform in urban India’. Contemporary South Asia. DOI: 10.1080/09584935.2022.2110569.

Subramanian, Vidya. (2022). Examining Teach for All: International Perspectives on a Growing Global Network, by Matthew A.M. Thomas, Emilee Rauschenberger and Katherine Crawford-Garrett. Policy Futures in Education. 0 (0): 1-3.

Sayed, Yusuf; Vidya Subramanian and Manish Jain. (2020). ‘Framing teachers in National Education Policy and in the popular media: Discourses on teachers and their work in South Asia’. In Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia, edited by Padma M. Sarangapani and Rekha Pappu. Berlin: Springer.

Subramanian, Vidya. (2020). ‘“We aren’t teachers, we are leaders”: Situating the Teach for India programme.’ In Teach For All Counter Narratives: International Perspectives on a Global Reform Movement, edited by T. Jameson Brewer, Kathleen deMarrais and Kelly L. McFaden. Bern: Peter Lang.

Subramanian, Vidya. (2019). ‘Parallel partnerships: Teach for India and new institutional regimes in municipal schools in New Delhi’. International Studies in Sociology of Education. DOI: 10.1080/09620214.2019.1668288.

Subramanian, Vidya. (2019). Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia, by Shenila Khoja-Moolji. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. 50 (3): 455–457.

Subramanian, Vidya. (2018). ‘From Government to Governance: Teach for India and new networks of reform in school education’. Contemporary Education Dialogue. 15 (1): 1-30. DOI: 10.1177/0973184917742247.

Subramanian, Vidya. (2018). The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age, by Julian Sefton-Green and Sonia Livingstone. International Studies in Sociology of Education. 27 (1): 100¬–102.

K.S., Vidya and Padma M. Sarangapani. (2011). ‘Is Education News?’. Economic & Political Weekly. XLVI (42): 69-76.

Subramanian, Vidya. (2009). This Gift of English: English Education and the Formation of Alternative Hegemonies in India, by Alok K. Mukherjee. Economic and Political Weekly. 44 (32): 30–32.
Email vsubramanian@jgu.edu.in
Key Expertise Sociology of education; education policy and governance; entrepreneurship and technical higher education; political economy of education; gender and development; development studies; qualitative research methods (ethnography, in-depth interviews, content and discourse analysis).