Ujju Aggarwal

Advisory Committee

Ujju Aggarwal is an Assistant Professor of
Anthropology and Experiential Learning in the Bachelor’s Program for
Adults and Transfer Students, and an affiliate faculty member in Global
Studies and the Department of Anthropology. She also serves as
Coordinator of BPATS’ Self-Directed Learning Program.

Aggarwal’s research examines questions related to public
infrastructures, urban space, racial capitalism, rights, gender, and the
state. Her first book, Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the
Partitioning of Public Education is forthcoming, University of Minnesota
Press, 2024. Aggarwal’s next project, Education Against Enclosure, is
supported by the Spencer Foundation. Her work has appeared in popular
outlets, scholarly journals, and edited volumes including Transforming
Anthropology; Scholar & Feminist Online; Educational Policy, and
Feminists Rethink the Neoliberal State: Inequality, Exclusion, and
Change (edited by Leela Fernandes). She is co-editor (with Edwin Mayorga
and Bree Picower), of What’s race got to do with it? How current school
reform policy maintains racial and economic inequality 2nd Edition
(Peter Lang, 2020); and co-editor (with Linta Varghese and Rupal Oza) of
Women’s Studies Quarterly Fall/Winter 2019.

Prior to joining The New School, Aggarwal was Visiting
Joanne Woodward Chair in Public Policy at Sarah Lawrence College. She
has been a Visiting Scholar at the Vermont Center for Fine Arts and has
also taught at Hunter College (CUNY) and Educational Opportunities
Center (SUNY). Her research has been supported by the Institute for
Urban Policy Research and Analysis (African and African Diaspora Studies
Department, University of Texas, Austin), the National Academy of
Education/ Spencer Foundation, the Center for Place, Culture and
Politics (CUNY Graduate Center), and the Davis Putter Fund.

In addition to her academic training, Aggarwal also brings a
long history of work as a community organizer and popular educator. For
over two decades, she has worked to build organizations that work for
educational justice, immigrants’ rights, abolition and transformative
justice as well as projects that focus on the intersection of arts and
social justice, popular education, and adult literacy.

She currently serves on the Board of Teachers Unite, on the
Advisory Board Member of the Parent Leadership Project (Bloomingdale
Family Head Start Center, PLP), on the Advisory Board Member of PARCEO
(Participatory Action-Research Center for Education, Organizing), and as
a mentor to National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation doctoral
and postdoctoral fellows.