Arathi is a sociologist of education. Her current research examines reparative justice in educational systems and practices. How might collective recognition of past and present injustices help us imagine ‘reparative futures’ of education? What does reparation in education look like?
This line of inquiry has emerged from Arathi’s scholarship over a number of years which has illuminated the structural injustices of schooling systems. She has examined the politics of educational inequality in the Indian, Australian and UK contexts as well as the global governance of childhood and the family.
Underlying much of this research has been an abiding interest in the racial politics of education. Her scholarship has explored the active erasures of racism and coloniality in the field of education and the ways in which racial capitalism sustains educational injustices. Major collaborative works in these areas include: Learning Whiteness: Education and the Settler Colonial State (Pluto, 2022); Black Lives Matter and Global Struggles for Racial Justice in Education (Chicago, 2023); and Learning With the Past: Racism, Education and Reparative Futures (Unesco, 2020).
Prior to joining the University of Oxford, Arathi taught at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Sydney. She is a co-convenor of the Race, Empire and Education Research Collective.
Funded Research Projects
Reparative Futures of Education (REPAIR-ED)
This is a five-year research programme (2023-2028) selected by the European Research Council and funded by UKRI Frontier Research. It involves collaborating with primary school-communities in the city of Bristol to conduct in-depth ethnographic and oral-history research on the features and mechanisms of structural inequities in education. The project uses its empirical findings to facilitate dialogues with schools, their communities, policy-actors and the broader public to explore how reparative justice in education might be conceptualised and enacted. It is motivated by the overarching question: what does reparation in education look like?
ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures
We live in a sociodigital world (the social and digital are interwoven). No single ‘future’ awaits us – there are many possible ‘sociodigital futures’. The Centre for Sociodigital Futures (CenSoF) brings together world-leading interdisciplinary expertise to explore sociodigital futures in-the-making to support fair and sustainable ways of life. Arathi is a member of the team whose work focuses on the sociodigital futures of education.
Global Advocacy for Anti-Racist Education
Global education policy frameworks have been silent on racism and coloniality, despite the overwhelming role of racial injustice in the maintenance of educational inequities across the world. This 8-year project, in partnership with Action Aid International, the University of Bristol, and a global consortium of anti-racist activists and educators, builds research evidence and a global movement for anti-racist education policy, systems and practices.