ÀÏ°ÄÃÅ×ÊÁÏ

Dr. Jessica Chandras, assistant professor of anthropology at the ÀÏ°ÄÃÅ×ÊÁÏ and linguistic anthropologist, was named among 25 early career scholars to the 2023 cohort of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellows.

The NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program supports scholars working in critical areas of education research. These $70,000 fellowships support non-residential postdoctoral proposals that make significant scholarly contributions to the field of education. The program also develops the careers of its recipients through professional development activities involving National Academy of Education members.

Dr. Chandras's project focuses on the role of linguistic inclusivity in education in rural India. The project examines the impacts of caste, language, and identity in education for students from a socially marginalized, Denotified Tribal group in the state of Maharashtra. Through qualitative ethnographic methods, she and a small research team will explore social stratification and the political economy of language evidenced in education among communities with two different home languages, or mother tongues: Marathi, the official state language of Maharashtra and Banjara, a language spoken by the formally nomadic community. The question framing this study asks how Banjara students, a group positioned at the margins of caste and socioeconomic status in India, understand and craft their identities in education through a distinct language within prevailing social hierarchies and in different educational languages. This study builds a model to collaboratively shape educational structures, through language mediums of instruction, to broaden education equity by empowering further inclusivity of students from diverse linguistic and social backgrounds.

As a linguistic anthropologist, Dr. Chandras uses qualitative, ethnographic and sociolinguistic research methods to examine values attached to language and multilingual language socialization practices pertaining to education through a lens of power. She explores political economies of language with a focus on intersections of language and socioeconomic class, caste, and linguistic politics in education, policy, and revitalization movements based in urban and rural Maharashtra, India. Dr. Chandras’ focus on multilingualism in education and social stratification was inspired by teaching English in the Basque Country for two years before pursuing her PhD. Her research in India has been supported by the International Society of the Learning Sciences and the Wallace Foundation and she was previously an NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellow. Her book, “Mother Tongue Prestige: The Sociolinguistics of Privilege in Urban Middle-Class Education in India” is forthcoming from Routledge in 2023. Dr. Chandras received her PhD in Anthropology from the George Washington University, in Washington, DC in 2019 and graduated with honors from the University of Washington with a BA in Anthropology with a minor in Spanish in 2010. Her work on language, education, and pedagogy has been featured in the journals “Language and Education” (2021), “Teaching Anthropology” (2021), “Critical Asian Studies” (2019), and “Contemporary Education Dialogue” (2022).