Rate My Professor Nisha Thapliyal

Dr Nisha Thapliyal is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She holds a PhD in Education Policy from the University of Maryland, USA, a Master of Arts in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Madras. Her professional career encompasses roles such as Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Colgate University, New York (2007-2011), and Post-Doctoral Scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Education (2006-2007). Additionally, she serves as Director International for the School of Education, Coordinator of Staff and Students Talking About Research (SSTAR), Deputy Chair of the University Human Research Ethics Committee since 2016, and Research Ethics Advisor for the School of Education. Originating from backgrounds in social work and psychology, her early research focused on discrimination and challenges faced by institutionalized children in India, leading her to comparative and international education to tackle systemic inequalities.

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.