Fair Chance Project News and Events

The project's first funded PhD Student has now arrived in the UK and settled into the project. Here is Anjali's account of her arrival:

"Landing in Birmingham after a nine-and-a-half-hour-long flight can be stressful. However, I happened to find co-passengers heading to the same university and accommodations. Happy coincidences have been easing my period of adjustment into a new university in a new country. I found friends who are either current students or have studied in Warwick a couple of years ago with great advice. Coventry is a beautiful modern town built around old churches and lots of parks. There are lots of churches, art museums and theatres to visit. Settling down in Coventry city is not so hard when everything from the bus passes, University and the library can be accessed from your phone.

I chose my high school when I fell in love with its library. I seem to have found a very lovable library in Warwick. It is also interesting to see how issuing, sorting and returning books are completely automated. Automation however, has not reduced the number of staff working in the library. In fact, I found people ready to help with any and all problems, be it, returning books, figuring out the scanners or printing. The library space is very welcoming with electronically movable book racks, different kinds of seating and working space where you can work in complete silence, eat a sandwich or even be a part of a noisy study group. The fact that it regularly hosts social event for research scholars and dog-petting sessions in the library makes me love it even more.

The Fair Chance Project which is funding all these new experiences and its interest in gender and higher education in Haryana is also a happy coincidence for me. I have worked for a year in Haryana as a researcher. The time spent in Haryana was focussed on studying how the value of the girl child had evolved in the last two decades and examining whether a conditional cash transfer scheme, Apni Beti Apna Dhan (Our daughter our wealth), had positively influenced the lives of the beneficiary girls in Haryana. My M.Phil. study studied caste based discrimination in Higher education. This involved a qualitative study of an undergraduate college in New Delhi where I explored the experiences of caste based discrimination and how students from the non-marginalised castes and classes consciously and un-consciously practiced caste based prejudices and discriminations. My interest in gender and higher education and the project’s objectives seem to be tailor made for each other.

At the University of Warwick, I met the principal investigators of the project, Professor Ann Stewart and Dr. Emily Henderson. Plans are being made for a second visit to Haryana by the team next year and I have begun working on a blog site for the project which will be publicised soon. I have also met my Supervisor Dr. Emily Henderson where we explored the relevant and interesting modules on gender and social science research that I might attend. I am slowly beginning to become a regular at the aforementioned lovely library and have started working on the Ph.D. Things certainly seem to be coming together in the most wonderful way."