Megha B.

I am a PhD from Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. During my PhD, I was awarded the UGC Senior Research Fellowship. In July 2019, I have submitted my PhD thesis on ‘The Abjected Self: A Psychoanalytic Study of Fear and Violence in Schools in Delhi’. I have worked on government schools with an attempt to see how does social exclusion becomes a psychological reality for children coming from poverty. In the paradox of many constitutional amendments, a certain section of children fail to internalise the concept of childhood as childhood is socially constructed. In the case of children with poverty, the lens of school and society at large is always a deficit. Poverty comes to be seen as a reason for their underperformance rather than a structural issue. In my PhD, I used the theoretical machinery of Julia Kristeva’s Abjection and Theodor Adorno’s Critical Theory. In my M.Phil (2012-14), I have intimately worked in the area related to the Right to Education Act, 2009. Most pertinently, I have dealt carefully with section 12 (1) (c) of the Act which seeks to provide 25% reservation to children blowing to Economically Weaker Section and Disadvantaged Group. Some of the theoretical underpinnings of Etienne Wenger’s Communities of Practice form the conceptual framework of my research. The findings of my study dealt with the complex network of social exclusion, identity, the positioning of children belonging to the reserved section and their participation in the classroom discourses. Childhood, schooling and protection of children’s rights are the key areas of my specialisation. I want to mention that my expertise is in qualitative research method, which includes narrative analysis, discourse analysis, content analysis, storytelling, etc. Apart from PhD experience, I have also worked closely with Heidelberg university under the project on active ageing for a year, and as a junior project fellow at CIET, NCERT. I have presented my research papers in Heidelberg University, Germany and participated in the International Congress of Psychology, held in Yokohama, Japan, in the year 2014.