Tanushree Sarkar (US-Canada 2021)
Tanushree Sarkar (27) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Community Research and Action program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She has an MSc. in Social and Cultural Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Delhi University.
Growing up with mobility issues, Tanushree struggled to embrace her disability identity and wrestled with how her experiences as a disabled woman interacted with her academic, caste, and class privileges. Now, she works to strengthen disability inclusion in schools and classrooms through the development of inclusive policies and pedagogies in India.
After her MSc., Tanushree developed workshops to strengthen teachers’ ability to create inclusive classrooms and redefine achievement in the classroom. At a legal nonprofit, she researched the implementation of disability-related legislation for inclusive education in India. And as a research manager at an education nonprofit, she examined teacher motivation and practices to enhance teacher participation within educational systems. She has also volunteered as a hands-on teacher at schools for children with disabilities and as an advisor to schools and NGOs on teacher professional development and program evaluation.
Through ethnographic and participatory research methods, Tanushree’s Ph.D. research looks at how to imagine and implement disability inclusion through increased partnerships between teachers, researchers, and non-state actors in India. Ultimately, the goal of this work is to improve outcomes for those most often overlooked: children with disabilities and children from historically marginalized backgrounds.
She says, “Through my career, I seek to create an education system where disability is viewed not as a deficit but as a form of diversity and where teachers have the voice and agency to ensure that all children have opportunities to feel successful, to belong, and to achieve.”
