My Research
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At the intersection of the sociology of higher education, critical social and racial theory, and organizational studies, my research explores how we define and recognize the nature of racialized organizations and what implications arise for social change once we account for an organization’s racialization. Higher education serves as the empirical case for my work.
While my scholarly record empirically touches on various aspects of higher education, such as undergraduate enrollment trends, the impact of race-conscious admissions, and university-community engagement, I also engage in theoretical inquiries regarding the sociology of knowledge and conceptualizing organizations as racialized. Methodologically, I have training in quantitative and qualitative approaches. My research falls into the tradition of Du Boisian sociology, focusing on how the color line, history, community, and context are critical dimensions for conceptualizing a racialized modernity. An additional area of personal inquiry pertains to anti-Blackness, anti-queerness, and gender conformity within the Sikh and Sikh-American diaspora and how it manifests itself in political and educational advocacy. Some of my public engagement work includes a BBC radio interview discussing queer gender identity in the South Asian community (from 2:45-3:00), and an interview with a British South Asian diaspora magazine. A copy of my CV is available here for download (as of 05/2018). |
Smiling is professionally important.
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Racializing Meritocracy: Ideas of Excellence and Exclusion in Faculty Diversity
Institutions of higher education are confronting a changing landscape with regards to ideas of merit, faculty diversity, and diversity work that are studied in three separate streams of scholarship, despite their interlocking nature. Through a mixed methods dissertation, I explore how conceptions of merit are (re)formed and deployed when hiring and promoting faculty, and how critical theories of race and its intersections with gender, sexuality, and colonialism can unpack these conceptions to identify why faculty diversification has been stagnant. This project interrogates the interlocking nature of the three aforementioned literatures, and puts forth a Du Boisian cultural studies approach to question the conditions of what constitutes knowledge and how knowledge is evaluated. My project conducts qualitative interviews with faculty at elite, private and public institutions and grounds these analyses in a novel historical narrative of merit, faculty diversity, and diversity work in higher education. With the focus on critical scholarship, my project contributes to the discourses on faculty diversity, pushes the diversity literature to more critically engage with theories of race, gender, sexuality, and colonialism, and considers the role that merit plays as a gatekeeper to structurally exclude minoritized scholars and scholarships.
Presentations
2017
"Race and Merit: Racialized Exclusion from Prestige in Higher Education Enrollment, 2004-2013." Paper presented at student workshop series, Brown University Department of Sociology, Providence, RI, October, 2017.
"Something in the Way We Race: Racial Order and Institutional Logics." Manuscript presented at
“Who Gets to Walk the Straight Line? Racial Differences in the Accumulation of Structural Advantage/Disadvantage in Education.” Manuscript presented at Population Association of America, Chicago, IL, April, 2017.
“Minoritized Identity Formation: Students’ Experiences with Diversity and Inclusion.” Presented at Association for Psychological Science, Boston, MA, May, 2017.
2016
"(Re)Imprinting Race into Organizations: A Theoretical Framing of Racial Imprinting." Manuscript presented at student workshop series, Brown University Department of Sociology, Providence, RI, April, 2016.
2015
“A path to dialogue: Graduate students of color and liberating education”, Gramlich Showcase, University of Michigan, Ford School of Public Policy, March, 2015.
“Educational and social pathways: A Critical Race Theory exploration of California Sikh youth”, Jakara Sikholars, Stanford University Center for South Asia &, Feb, 2015.
2014
“Institutionally stratified degree attainment in Michigan's postsecondary education”, Division of Accountability Services & Educational Services, MI Dept. of Ed, Aug 2014.
"Race and Merit: Racialized Exclusion from Prestige in Higher Education Enrollment, 2004-2013." Paper presented at student workshop series, Brown University Department of Sociology, Providence, RI, October, 2017.
"Something in the Way We Race: Racial Order and Institutional Logics." Manuscript presented at
- W.E.B. Du Bois and the Color Line in the 21st Century: Continuity, Challenges, and New Directions, Social Theory Forum, Boston, MA, March, 2017.
- Mini-conference on Race and Organizations, Eastern Sociological Society, Philadelphia, PA, February, 2017.
“Who Gets to Walk the Straight Line? Racial Differences in the Accumulation of Structural Advantage/Disadvantage in Education.” Manuscript presented at Population Association of America, Chicago, IL, April, 2017.
“Minoritized Identity Formation: Students’ Experiences with Diversity and Inclusion.” Presented at Association for Psychological Science, Boston, MA, May, 2017.
2016
"(Re)Imprinting Race into Organizations: A Theoretical Framing of Racial Imprinting." Manuscript presented at student workshop series, Brown University Department of Sociology, Providence, RI, April, 2016.
2015
“A path to dialogue: Graduate students of color and liberating education”, Gramlich Showcase, University of Michigan, Ford School of Public Policy, March, 2015.
“Educational and social pathways: A Critical Race Theory exploration of California Sikh youth”, Jakara Sikholars, Stanford University Center for South Asia &, Feb, 2015.
2014
“Institutionally stratified degree attainment in Michigan's postsecondary education”, Division of Accountability Services & Educational Services, MI Dept. of Ed, Aug 2014.
