NCID-1260
Vandana Chaudhry
Assistant Professor, City University of New York, College of Staten Island
City University of New York
Education/Degree:
1 Social Work (University of Illinois at Chicago)
About
Dr. Chaudhry is an assistant professor of social work at City University of New York (CUNY) College of Staten Island. She earned her PhD in social work and disability studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her areas of research pertain to disability in the global south, neoliberal governance, anthropology of development, and culturally competent practices. Her research and published work explores disability at the intersection of development, globalization, neoliberalism, and the politics of subject-formation in rural South India. She has extensive interdisciplinary teaching and research experience in social work and disability studies with a focus on South Asia. She has been actively involved in disability rights initiatives in developing countries, and has served in consultative roles with various international institutions including the World Bank. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Society for Social Work and Research, and CUNY among others.
Current Work
Dr. Chaudhry's research and teaching pedagogy is oriented towards fostering disability as intrinsic to human diversity, and to promote policies that enable self-determination and full participation for all. As a scholar of and with disability, she is engaged in the collaborative endeavor of building southern discourses on disability through culturally grounded representations of disability experiences in the global south. Her ethnographic research on disability minoritization and uneven development in the context of India explores the political and ethical challenges experienced by disabled people in the landscape of neoliberal governance, and ways of envisioning change, power, and empowerment. Recently, she has also begun working on diversity issues in higher education, promoting critical disability pedagogies through academic, intellectual, and cultural engagements at CUNY. Contributing to transnational disability research and teaching, these initiatives are of direct relevance to NCID’'s initiative on diversity in public policy, culture, and social justice.
Research Area Keyword(s)
Social WorkDisability Studies