Rate My Professor Nisha Thapliyal

Thapliyal’s research critically examines pedagogy, curriculum, and education policy through lenses of critical, antiracist, feminist, and queer theories of education. She explores how community-based activism and social movements contribute to strengthening public education systems and democratizing education policy-making, with fieldwork in South Africa, India, the United States, and her PhD dissertation on the educational philosophy and critical pedagogies of Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST). Notable publications include “The Movement is the School: Political Learning in the 2020 Farmers Occupation in India” (2025), ‘“Stones One Day, Flowers the Next”: The Struggle for Itinerant Schools in the Landless Workers Movement (MST), Brazil’ (2022), ‘(No) right to protest?: Student activism at public universities in India in the Modi era’ (2021), ‘Privatized Rights, Segregated Childhoods: A Critical Analysis of Neoliberal Education Policy in India’ (2016), and ‘Duty, Discipline, and Dreams: Childhood and Time in Hindutva Nation’ (2023). In recognition of her work, she received the Women in Research Fellowship ($30,000) in 2022 for her project on Peace and Social Justice Education. Her research fields encompass comparative and cross-cultural education, education policy, sociology and philosophy, and gender, sexuality and education. Thapliyal is interested in supervising graduate research on topics including education and participatory democracy, gender and sexuality studies, peace education, and social justice.