October 6, 2020
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Payal Shah, PhD
University of South Carolina

In this talk Dr. Payal Shah presents aspects of an 8-year longitudinal ethnographic study of gender, education, and empowerment in Gujarat, India. After describing the study and its methodology, she uses findings to illuminate the relational and intergenerational dimensions of empowerment. She will then discuss current and future research that stem from this project to better investigate empowerment as an intergenerational and relational process. She discusses this new research in light of the global covid-19 pandemic and will close with an overview of the challenges of conducting participatory, qualitative research at this historic moment.

Dr. Payal P. Shah (Ph.D., Indiana University-Bloomington) is an Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Qualitative Inquiry in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of South Carolina. She conducts critical ethnographic and participatory research on gender, education, and development in India and has published across the fields of international and comparative education, qualitative inquiry, and women’s and gender studies. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in qualitative inquiry, social foundations of education, and comparative and international education.