About me

Shankar Gugoloth is a doctoral scholar in the Department of Liberal Arts at IIT Hyderabad, where he works closely with Professor Haripriya Narasimhan. From August 2024 to June 2025, he is also a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, working under the mentorship of Professor Sangeeta Kamat. 

Born in the heartland of the Kakatiya Dynasty, Shankar’s journey from the dusty schoolyards of Telangana to lecture halls in Amherst has been shaped by questions that lie at the core of everyday life: What does it mean to aspire? Who gets to dream, and how are those dreams shaped, interrupted, or rewritten by institutions like the school or the state?

His research sits at the lively intersection of education, aspirations, and social structures, drawing from the anthropology of education, youth studies, and school ethnography. Shankar’s doctoral work traces the lived experiences of Dalit and tribal youth in Telangana’s welfare residential schools—state-run institutions that promise transformation through education. He explores how these young people navigate the tightrope between structural marginality and the soaring narratives of development that invite them to ‘dream big.’ In doing so, he asks: How does education mediate belonging, becoming, and the desire to move?

His fieldwork moves beyond policy documents and classrooms—into hostel corridors, mealtime conversations, and quiet moments of reflection among students. For Shankar, ethnography is not just a method, but a commitment to listening closely and writing with care.

 When not immersed in transcripts or theory, Shankar finds joy in blogging, watching cinema (especially anything that blends politics with poetry), and losing himself in the layered histories of India and the world. He believes that reflective writing isn’t just a scholarly act—it’s a way of being in the world.