Madhulika Sonkar is an assistant professor of sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi. Her work engages the politics of schooling cultures, aspirations, and future-making processes among youth in contemporary India. Her PhD was based on the ethnographic study of a five-decade old Muslim girls’ school in Ballimaran, Old Delhi where she examined young women’s educational experiences in the complex mesh of class, beraderi, family, and neighbourhood. Her research and teaching are located at the intersections of sociology of education, gender studies, childhood and youth studies, and critical pedagogy. Her publications have focused on questions pertaining to pedagogies of care, methodological tensions in educational ethnography, curriculum policies, and shifting meanings of skills and vocation in the global South. Methodological interrogations on the challenges of conducting ethnography in diverse educational spaces remain pivotal to her training as a sociologist.
Currently she is an editorial member at the journal Feminist Review.
Madhulika has earlier taught sociology at Indraprastha College for Women and Maitreyi College, University of Delhi. Prior to joining academia, she was a news reporter covering public health, gender, and education for Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) from 2010-2012.