Anthropological Perspectives on Education in Nepal Educational Transformations and Avenues of Learning

Karen Valentin, Associate Professor in Educational Anthropology, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark,Uma Pradhan, Lecturer in South Asian Studies, University of Oxford, UK

Karen Valentin, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Anthropology, School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. She completed her PhD in anthropology from the University of Copenhagen in 2002 and has conducted research in Nepal, India, Vietnam, and Denmark within the fields of education, migration, urban life, and youth since the mid-1990s. Her research has focused on the role of education in interrelated processes of geographical and social mobility in the context of conflict-related migration from Nepal to India and in student migration from Nepal to Denmark. She has been engaged in various research activities in collaboration with Tribhuvan University and Kathmandu University as well as interdisciplinary research on public finance in education in Nepal.


Uma Pradhan is Departmental Lecturer, South Asian Studies, University of Oxford, UK. She holds a D.Phil from the University of Oxford and uses ethnographic methods to explore social meanings of education and the larger processes of state-society interaction in its production.

1. Anthropological Perspectives on Education in Nepal: Educational Transformations and Avenues of Learning, Karen Valentin and Uma Pradhan
2. Nepal's New Rich: Class, Differentiation, and Elite Education in Kathmandu, Todd John Wallenius
3. The Burden of Inherited Aspirations: Education as a Positional Good, Shrochis Karki
4. Navigating Class Through Education: Urban Poor Families's Choice of Schools, Reidun Faye
5. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Dalit Experiences of Primary and Secondary Education in West-Central Nepal, Krishna P. Adhikari and David N. Gellner
6. A Buddhist Educated Person: 'Modern Education' in the Monastery, Cameron David Warner
7. Drawing Out Migration: Rural to Urban Transitions and the Re-imagined Futures of Himalayan School Children, Sarah Burack, Geoff Childs, Elizabeth A. Quinn, Jhangchuk Sangmo, and Jean Hunleth
8. Moving to Learn: New Horizons of Nepali Education, Karen Valentin
9. Contesting Caste at University Sites: Dalits at Nepal's Universities - Inequality, Belonging, Transformations, Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka
10. (Re)constructing a 'Good' School: Materials, Affects, and Meanings of Education in Post-earthquake Nepal, Uma Pradhan
11. Locating Multilingual Education in Nepal: Dhimal Language as Local and National?, Miranda Weinberg