Ujju Aggarwal

Ujju Aggarwal is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School. Prior to joining The New School, she 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 (UT Austin), the National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation, the Center for Place, Culture and Politics (CUNY Graduate Center), and the Davis Putter Fund. Ujju's research examines questions related to public infrastructures, urban space, racial capitalism, rights, gender, and the state. She is currently completing her first book, The Color of Choice: Raced Rights, Education, and the Structure of Citizenship, is a historically informed ethnography of choice as it emerged in the post-Civil Rights period in the United States. Her next project traces uneven urban development temporally and spatially through a theory of what she terms carceral care. In addition to her academic training, for two decades, Ujju has worked to build local and national organizations that work for educational justice, immigrants' rights, 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 as the Co-Chair for the K-16 Committee of the American Studies Association, as an Advisory Board Member of the Parent Leadership Project (Bloomingdale Family Head Start Center, PLP), and as an Advisory Board Member of PARCEO (Participatory Action-Research Center for Education Organizing.