Dr. Advaita Rajendra

Dissertation

• Title: Governing by (in)visibilising: A case of waste and waste- work
  It is an ethnographic examination of governance practices that ‘selectively (in)visibilise’ waste, waste-work and waste infrastructures through classification, relabelling, ignoring, erasures, and celebrations.

Journal Publications

• Rajendra, A. (2022). Skills in ‘unskilled’ work: A case of waste work in central India, Third World Quarterly.
• Rajendra, A. & Sarin, A. (2021). Residential education for disadvantaged girls: an alternate field? Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 28 (2).

Journal Publications (under review)

• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (submitted). Framing of manual scavenging in India: A historical understanding of the policy discourse. In Brown P. (eds.) The politics and practices of re-interpretation – using interpretative methods to understand change in public administration. Journal of Public Administration.
• Rajendra, A., & Chennangodu, R. (R&R). Half of my body is working at the office and the other half is at home”: Narratives of placemaking while working from homes in rural and small-town India. Culture and Organization.

Book Chapters

• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (under review). Exploring (in)visibilisation of waste-work in small-town India: A case of self-help groups In (eds) M. Zapata Campos, P. Zapata, J. Gutberlet, F. Valenzuela, A. Stowell, Re-Opening the Bin, Bristol University Press.
• Rajendra, A., & Harriss-White, B. (2023 forthcoming).  The skills of ‘city-makers’: waste-work in small-town India’, In (eds) S. Schwecke, S. Maitra & S. Maitra, Crafting India’s skill ecology – Reproductions, recalibrations, and reimaginations. Sage.
• Mathur, N., Mittal, H., Rajendra, A. & Pathak, M. (2019). Ahmedabad/ GIFT. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Other Articles

• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (2022). ‘Are you writing this down?’ When taking field notes, is being reflexive about researcher-participant distance enough?’, The Sociological Review Magazine.
• Singhal, K., Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (April 2021). Another wave spells more nutrition loss, The Hindu.
• Singhal, K. Rajendra, A., Sarin, A. (March 2021). Accessing government schemes in rural Bihar during Covid-19, Ideas for India.
• Gupta, I., Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (2020). DUET: Creating a resilient ecosystem for vulnerable populations, Ideas for India.
• Shaikh, A., & Rajendra, A. (2020). In Ahmedabad, lack of localised COVID-19 data and administrative tangle impede fight against virus, Firstpost.
• Sarin, A., & Rajendra, A. (2015). A Second Chance: Re-engaging students who have discontinued schooling, Pratham Education Foundation.

• Won the Prof. Tirath Gupta Memorial Award for Best Thesis, 2022 at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (2022).
• Received Asian Development Bank funding for travel and stay for RC21 Urban and Regional Development (2019).
• Received the Asha Khanna Trophy for securing 100% marks in Mathematics in 12th boards (2009).

Eco-social entrepreneurship, Public Policy, Data visualisation for policy making, Design thinking, Gender and caste at workplaces, Government systems, Qualitative research methods

• Asst. Professor, IIM Sirmaur (January 2023 onwards)
• Asst. Professor, O.P. Jindal Global University (October 2021 - December 2022)
• Lecturer, O.P. Jindal Global University (July 2021 - September 2021)
• Consultant, Rapid Rural Community Response (RCRC) to COVID-19 (September 2020 – Jul 2021)
• Research Associate, IIM, Ahmedabad (October 2014 – June 2015)
• Consultant, PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Mumbai (September 2013 – September 2014)

• Rajendra, A., & Chennangodu, R. (2022). Embodied knowledge systems in the creation of a piece of cloth: Re-empowering connections between creation, consumption and beyond. Gender, Work and Organization.
• Rajendra, A., & Chennangodu, R. (2021). Reconsidering coworkers and care-workers: home as a coworking space. The 12th International Conference in Critical Management Studies, BML Munjal University.
• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (2021). (In)visibilizing waste and waste-work through numbers, 3rd International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP5), Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) and International Public Policy Association.
• Rajendra, A., & Harriss-White, B. (2021). The social life of skills in waste-work, The Social Life of Skills Workshop, The University of Melbourne.
• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (2021). (In)visibilizing waste and waste-workers: a case of self-help groups, Re-opening the bin - Waste, economy, culture and society, School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenberg.
• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (2021). (In)visibilisation of waste and waste work: intersections of gender, caste and organisational form, Gender, Work and Organization, University of Kent, Kent Business School and Gender, Work & Organisation.
• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (2019). ‘Visibilising’ waste and waste-workers: A case of the National Cleanliness Survey, International Research Society for Public Management, Victoria University, Wellington.
• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (2019). (De)valuation of waste and waste work: A story of a small town in central India. RC21 Urban and Regional Development, Delhi Contemporary, Center for Policy Research and Ambedkar University Delhi.
• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (2019). Framing of manual scavenging in India: A historical understanding of the policy discourse, International Research Society for Public Management, Victoria University Wellington.
• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A., & Mathur, N. (2017). Conceptualizing the problem of ‘unwanted’ girls and analyzing the Indian State’s response, 3rd International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP3), Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore.
• Rajendra, A., & Sarin, A. (2017). Situating residential education in the socio-cultural life of adolescent girls in India, XII International Conference on Public Policy and Management, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.