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M.A. (TISS, Mumbai);

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

Prof. (Dr.) Vidya Subramanian

Associate Professor

Email vsubramanian@jgu.edu.in
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Key Expertise School and technical higher education systems in contemporary India, vocational education and skills-based training, education policy and development, data and governance

M.A. (TISS, Mumbai);

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

Biography

Dr. Vidya Subramanian has an interdisciplinary academic background in sociology, education studies, and development studies. She is interested in questions that explore Public Private Partnerships in education, entrepreneurship and governance in post-liberalisation India. 

Dr. Subramanian’s 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 school 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 managing 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 reforms. 

Her 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 It takes as its problem the increasingly outdated curriculum in engineering colleges that is unable to match industry requirements, and investigates the various policy measures aimed at creating an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. 

Dr. Subramanian’s 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. 

Society and Public policy

Gender and development

Education policy: Perspectives

institutions and processes

Examining Higher education policy

Qualitative research methods

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)

Ministry of Human Resource Development, Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (associated with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai: 2019-2021, in collaboration with the School of Education and Social Work, University of Sussex)

The Spencer Foundation conference grant (associated with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai: 2019-2020, 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 (associated with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai: 2018)
 

  • Peer reviewer: Contemporary Education Dialogue, Sage journals
  • Peer reviewer: Journal of South Asian Development, Sage 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)
  • British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE)
  • British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS)

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 School and technical higher education systems in contemporary India, vocational education and skills-based training, education policy and development, data and governance