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South Asian Studies

Oxford School of Global and Area Studies

Dr Uma Pradhan

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Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Uma Pradhan is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow (OSGA - South Asian Studies) and Junior Research Fellow (Wolfson College). Her research focuses on power-laden dimensions of education. She convenes the Options paper 'Education, state and society in South Asia'.

 

Her current research explores the contested process of everyday state-making through a study on school reconstruction projects in post-earthquake Nepal. Taking ‘reconstruction’ as an analytic space of possibility, this research investigates, firstly, the rebuilding of physical spaces and, secondly, the reconstruction of discursive spaces within which they are embedded i.e. ideas and narratives about the (failing) state education system in Nepal. 

 

Uma received her DPhil in International Development (2016) from University of Oxford, where she studied the cultural politics of minority language use in schools. She was awarded Dor Bahadur Bista prize 2015 and Nations and Nationalism prize 2018 for the articles based on this research. Her monograph is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

 

Prior to joining OSGA, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2016-2018) at the Department of Education Anthropology, Aarhus University, Copenhagen. Her research at Aarhus focused on understanding the ways in which public funding for the education of marginalised groups shape the relationship between state and citizens. Based on this research, she guest-edited (with Karen Valentin) a collection of articles published as a special issue in South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies.

 

Before joining academia, Uma worked in the development sector for several years.

 

Research Interests
Research Disciplines:
  • Education
  • Anthropology
  • Development Studies
Research Keywords:
  • Nepal, anthropology of education, ethnicity & nationalism, minority language education, everyday state-making.
Countries:
  • Nepal, South Asia
Research Cluster:

 

Select Publications

  • Simultaneous Identities: Language, Education, and the Nepali Nation

    Pradhan, U
    2020
    |
    Book
    This book is based on the premise that language dynamics in public places reveal a lot about the process of negotiation of symbolic power that is underway in any sociopolitical context. Drawing on the everyday practices in the two schools, this book illustrates that social actors in minority language education did not necessarily select between minority identity and national identity, instead shifted the terms of engagement by discursively positioning ‘ethnic identity’ as ‘national identity’.Here, the book highlights two distinct but interrelated dynamics. On the one hand, everyday language practices in the schools display inward-looking characteristics by stand ensuring mother tongue competency and conscious construction of unified ethnolinguistic identity. On the other hand, there were outward-looking dynamics of transcending ethnic boundaries and actively engaging with the broader national education system. The salience of these processes is the simultaneous membership to multiple groups, claims over public spaces and in the spaces of nationalism, hitherto associated with Nepali. Contrary to the ideas of difference espoused in ethnic activism and assimilationist ideas of homogeneity articulated in nationalist discourse, students made simultaneous claims to more than one social identity which were considered neither incompatible nor binary opposites. This emerging narrative of simultaneities in minority language education may help us to appreciate the issues of national and minority identity in a more open-ended way.
    education, South Asia, language, Nepal, ethnicity, nationalism

  • Disjunctured reciprocity: paradoxes of community-school relationship in Nepal

    Pradhan, U, Shrestha, S, Valentin, K
    2019
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Globalisation, Societies and Education

  • Towards a Relational Approach to the State: Understanding Social and Political Transformation in Nepal

    Pradhan, U, Valentin, K
    2019
    |
    Journal article
    |
    South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

  • 3. Transforming Language to Script: Constructing Linguistic Authority through Language Contact in Schools in Nepal

    Pradhan, U
    2019
    |
    Chapter
    |
    The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya

  • Ethnographies of Education and Anthropological Locations

    PRADHAN, U, Valentin, K
    Edited by:
    Noblit, G
    2019
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education
    From an anthropological perspective, (educational) ethnography is much more than just a method in terms of a set of techniques but a way of taking a place in and grasping the world that ethnographers aim to represent and comprehend. With an imperative of “being there,” the ethnographer travels to specific locations to establish some form of physical presence in the field site. The idea of “location,” therefore, is central to educational ethnography in several ways. Research on education among different categories of people in Nepal, and a vast body of ethnographic literature on education around the world, demonstrates the centrality of “location” in anthropological knowledge production. This article discusses “location” as a conceptual category in order to explore the different analytical levels at which it operates in anthropological knowledge production on education. It does so in three different ways. First, ethnographers’ locations in the field—their biographical trajectories, academic backgrounds, and social positions—lay the ground for the ways in which ethnographers ‘see’ education in the field. Second, the historical context and sociopolitical developments of specific geographic locations, in this case Nepal, draw attention to ways in which existing societal concerns foster particular research interests on education and consequently shape knowledge about a given geographical location. Third, conducting ethnographic fieldwork in a variety of spatial sites within and beyond institutions of schooling allows ethnographers to explore the multiple and often conflicting meanings of education. This awareness on the multiplicity of ethnographic locations in educational ethnography promises to deepen our understanding of education, broadly defined, through a rigorous and highly contextualized inquiry that highlights multiple and contested voices and presents subjective modes of perceiving reality.
    Nepal, anthropological locations, education ethnography

  • Interrogating quality: minority language, education and imageries of competence in Nepal

    Pradhan, U
    2019
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education

  • Multi-Ethnic Citizens in a Multi-Ethnic State: Constructing State–Citizen Relations Through ‘Difference’ in the Adivasi Janajati Scholarship Programmes in Nepal

    Pradhan, U
    2019
    |
    Journal article
    |
    South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies
    © 2019, © 2019 South Asian Studies Association of Australia. In 1990, the Constitution of Nepal declared Nepal a multi-ethnic (bahujatiya) country. This newly transformed state promised better inclusion of marginalised groups through special provisions. How has this been operationalised, and what does this mean in practice for the members of the groups concerned? Drawing on fieldwork in the Nepal Foundation for Development of Indigenous Nationalities (NFDIN), this paper argues that the Nepali state’s moral and political obligation to address long-standing concerns about group-based inequalities has opened up intriguing new spaces to perform and redefine state–society relations. Within these new spaces, categories of difference are constantly invoked and experienced, where both the state and citizens come to co-constitute each other in a variety of new ways.

  • Simultaneous identities: ethnicity and nationalism in mother tongue education in Nepal

    PRADHAN, U
    2018
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Nations and Nationalism
    © The author(s) 2018. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2018. The scholarly works on ethnicity and nationalism have been highly dominated by binary frameworks. In addition, the normative preference for civic consciousness and the concerns of national disintegration often separate the notions of ethnicity and nationalism. This article suggests that the notions of ethnicity and nationalism cannot be understood exclusively as a choice between maintaining the integrity of the nation and completely rejecting it. Drawing on fieldwork in mother tongue schools in Nepal, the article draws attention to the ways in which school actors discursively positioned ethnic identity as imperative to national identity, the one that bolsters the notion of Nepali nationhood. By paying close attention to the everyday context within which discourses of nationalism are situated, this article argues for an analytical necessity to approach ethnicity and nationalism in relation to each other to appreciate the process of symbolic negotiations in public spaces.

  • National education system in Nepal: between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’

    PRADHAN, U
    Edited by:
    Letchamanan, H
    2018
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Education in South Asia

  • Contesting knowledge, constructing legitimacy: knowledge making in mother-tongue education schools in Nepal

    Pradhan, U
    2017
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Ethnography and Education
    © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Scholars in education have drawn our attention to the ways in which social power and control manifests in the process of knowledge production in education institutions especially through school curriculum. In this paper, I analyse school textbooks along with classroom instruction events and everyday practices in a mother-tongue school in Nepal. Drawing on the concept of ‘legitimate knowledge’, this paper discusses mother-tongue education as a struggle over symbolic resources, whereby familiarity with ‘daily life in the locality’ is discursively drawn upon to articulate mother tongue as an effective pedagogy and legitimate knowledge. The paper argues that the introduction of mother tongue in the school curriculum is, therefore, more than an addition of new language. It is a process of negotiating what it means to ‘know’ things in school. In doing so, this paper illustrates a dynamic process of re-signification of local languages, knowledge and identities that is underway.
    • More
Publications

Monograph

Pradhan, U. (Forthcoming, 2020). Language, Education, and the Nepali Nation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

 

Edited collection

Pradhan, U. and Valentin, K.  (Guest Editors). 2019. ‘Towards a relational approach to State: understanding social and political transformation in Nepal’, special issue in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol 42, no. 5. 

Valentin, K. and Pradhan, U. (Editors), in preparation, Ethnographies of education in Nepal, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Journal articles

Pradhan, U. and Valentin, K. 2019. Introduction: Towards a relational approach to State: understanding social and political transformation in Nepal’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol 42, no. 5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2019.1642615

Pradhan, U. 2019. Multi-ethnic citizens in a multi-ethnic state: Constructing state-citizen relations through ‘difference’ in Adivasi Janajati scholarship programmes in Nepal, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol 42, no. 5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2019.1645084

Pradhan, U. 2019. Interrogating quality: language, education, and imageries of competence in Nepal. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2018.1559036

Pradhan, U., Shrestha, S. and Valentin, K. 2019. Disjunctured reciprocity: Paradoxes of community-school relationship in Nepal, Globalisation, Societies, and Education, 17:5, 561-573.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2019.1584032

Pradhan, U. 2018. Simultaneous identities: ethnicity and nationalism in mother tongue education in Nepal. Nations and Nationalism 25 (2): 718-738. (Nations and Nationalism Essay Prize 2018) DOI: doi.org/10.1111/nana.12463

Pradhan, U. 2017. Constructing knowledge, contesting legitimacy: knowledge-making in mother-tongue education schools in Nepal’, Ethnography and Education 12(3): 381-394. DOI: 10.1080/17457823.2017.1291358

Pradhan, U. 2016. New languages of schooling: dynamics of ethnicity and education in Nepal, HIMALAYA, The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies 36(2): 9-21 (Dor Bahadur Bista Award 2015) https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol36/iss2/6/

Pradhan, U. 2007.The child-to-child approach to community and health development in South Asia. Children, Youth and Environments, 17(1): 257-268

Pradhan, U. and I. Roy. 2006. Pluralism and civil society partnerships: perspectives from Nepal and Uttar Pradesh’, Contemporary South Asia 15(1): 55-75. DOI: 10.1080/09584930600938065

 

Book chapters

Pradhan, U. and Valentin, K. 2019. 'Ethnography of education and anthropological knowledge production', In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Ed. George Noblit. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.468

Pradhan, U. 2019. 'From Language to Script: Constructing linguistic authority through language contact in schools in Nepal', In (Eds.) Mark Turin and Selma Sonntag, Politics of Language Contact in the Himalayas, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers (https://www.openbookpublishers.com//download/book/1073)

Pradhan, U. and Karki, S. 2019. 'Sustainable Development Goals in Nepal: Prospects and Challenges', In (Eds.) Nitya Khemka and Suraj Kumar, Social Development and the Sustainable Development Goals in South Asia, London: Routledge (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351035262)

Pradhan, U. 2018. 'National education system in Nepal: between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’, In H. Letchamanan and D. Dhar (Ed.) Education in South Asia, London: Bloomsbury Publications (part of Education Around the World Series), pp 165-183 (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/education-in-south-asia-and-the-indian-ocean-islands-9781350132856/)

 

Teaching

2019/20. Course design and teaching, ‘Education, State, and Society in South Asia’ MPhil and MSc in Modern South Asian Studies, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford. 

2018-19. Contribute to lectures and classes on MPhil/MSc in Modern South Asian Studies, Oxford School of  Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford.

2015-2019. Tutor, ‘History and Politics of South Asia’, Options course for Development Studies, Modern South Asian Studies, and Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE), University of Oxford.

2018/19. Tutor, ‘Anthropology of South Asia’, Options course for Anthropology and Modern South Asian Studies, University of Oxford.

2016. Course design and teaching, Six-week module on ‘State, Society and Schooling: Governing Education in South Asia’, Aarhus University (Denmark) and Kathmandu University- Martin Chautari (Nepal).

2014-2016. Graduate Teaching Assistant, MPhil in Development Studies, Department of International Development & MSc in Contemporary India, School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford.

Talks

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

2019. Alternative modes of funding ‘free’ public education in Nepal, Martin Chautari Annual Conference, Nepal (April 21–23)

2018. Education ethnography: anthropological knowledge production in education, Education and Ethnography Conference, University of Oxford. 18-20 Sept

2018. Social and political transformation in Nepal: ethnographic perspectives on state-citizen relations, Workshop co-organised with Karen Valentin (14-18 May)

2017. Nation and nationalism in mother-tongue textbooks in Nepal, Panel: Nationalism and Education in Nepal, Himalayan Studies Conference, University of Colorado Boulder, USA (September 1-4)

2017. ‘What is South Asia?” South Asia political thought seminar series, University of Oxford (November 20)

2017. Becoming ‘eligible’: documents, intermediary actors, and the state in education scholarship programmes, Panel: Public Finance Dynamics in School Education in Nepal, Himalayan Studies Conference, University of Colorado Boulder, USA (September 1-4) and Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal and Himalaya, Kathmandu (26-28 July)

2016. ‘Durga Kami: caste and education in Nepal’, Caste in South Asia Conference, Oxford (July 2016)

2016. ‘New languages of schooling’, Martin Chautari Research Centre, Nepal (4 March)

2015. ‘Constructing knowledge, contesting legitimacy: knowledge-making in mother-tongue education schools in Nepal’, Ethnography and Education Conference, University of Oxford, UK (September 5-8)

2014. ‘Deficit discourse in minority language education’, British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) thematic group meeting, University of Leeds, UK (July 2014)

2014. ‘Learning the new Nepal: reconstituting educational space in multi-lingual schools in Nepal’ paper presented in British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Conference, University of Bath, UK (September 2014)

2014. ‘Ethnicity, equality and education in Nepal’ work in progress presented QEH DPhil Seminar Series, University of Oxford, UK (July 2014)

 

CONFERENCE AND SEMINAR ORGANISED

2018. Co-convenor (with Karen Valentin), ‘Social and political transformation in Nepal: ethnographic perspectives on state-citizen relations’ Two-day workshop at Aarhus University, Copenhagen (May 14-15, 2018)

2017. Panel Co-convenor, Navigating state institutions in the Himalayas: ethnographic perspective. Himalayan Studies Conference, University of Colorado Boulder, USA (Sept 1-4)

2016. Convenor, Wolfson Graduate Student Workshop, ‘What is South Asia?’ (May 2016) 

2015-16. Co- Convenor, DPhil Seminar series, QEH, University of Oxford, 2015 – 2016 

2015. Co-Convenor, Research Methods @ QEH Seminar series, QEH, University of Oxford, Hilary Term 2015

Contact Information

Email: uma.pradhan(at) area.ox.ac.uk

College: Wolfson College

Office Details: 11 Bevington Road, Oxford, OX2 6LH

 

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