Faculty Fellows

Mary Ann Chacko is an Assistant Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences. Her research interests include critical childhood and youth studies, the role of police in schools, gender, citizenship, and qualitative methods, especially ethnography . She has a doctorate in Curriculum Studies from Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.

Dr Chacko began her teaching career at Montfort Anglo-Indian Higher Secondary School, Tamil Nadu. She also worked as a Guest Lecturer in Siliguri BEd College, North Bengal University and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. She joined Ahmedabad University in January 2018. 

Using anthropological methodologies, my first research project examined the Student Police Cadet programme implemented in government schools across Kerala, India with a focus on youth citizenship and school-community relations. I studied the different collaborations, educational spaces, and pedagogical practices through which a cadet programme trains young people to be ‘participatory citizens’ in contemporary India. I am currently studying the experiences of Muslim women in higher education settings in India. I am also the Founding-Editor of Sociological and Anthropological Studies of Education in India (SASEI). 

Peer-reviewed Articles 

• Chacko, M.A. (2020). English education as 'readymade leadership': Re-inscribing distinction through the Student Police Cadet project in Kerala, India.  South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 43(4), 775-792. 
• Ratnam, M., Bagchi, S., & Chacko, M.A. (2020). Protesting in Ahmedabad: Between Resistance and Restrictions. Political and Legal Anthropology Review (as part of essay series on the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019). https://polarjournal.org/2020/09/07/protesting-in-ahmedabad-between-resistance-and-restrictions/
• Naraian, S. Chacko, M.A., Feldman, C., & Schwitzman-Gerst, T. (2020). Emergent concepts of inclusion in the context of committed school leadership. Education and Urban Society, 52(8), 1238-1263.
• Chacko, M.A. (2019) Freedoms in the khaki: gendering a ‘gender-neutral’ uniform, Gender and Education, 33(1), 86-102. 
• Chacko, M.A. (2010). "Bend It like Beckham": Dribbling the Self through a Cross-Cultural Space. Multicultural Perspectives, 12(2), 81-86.

Book Chapters 

• Chacko, M.A. (2023). Mediated Childhoods: Newspapers and the Modern Malayali Child. In A. Dar and D. Kannan (Eds.). Childhood and Youth in India: Engagements with Modernity (pp.77-99). Palgrave Macmillan: Switzerland.  
• Lesko, N., Chacko, M.A. & Khoja-Moolji, S. (2023). The Promises of Empowered Girls. In J. Wyn & H. Cahill (Eds.), Handbook of Children and Youth Studies (2nd ed). Springer.
• Lesko, N., Chacko, M.A. & Khoja-Moolji, S. (2015). The Promises of Empowered Girls. In J. Wyn & H. Cahill (Eds.), Handbook of Children and Youth Studies . Springer.
• Chacko, M.A. (2015). Schooling as Counter-Socialization: Krishna Kumar’s Contributions to Curriculum. In William Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum Studies in India: Intellectual Histories, Present Circumstances. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Khoja-Moolji, S. & Chacko, M.A. (2011)."Post-colonialism, Impact on Women". The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World. Sage Publications.

Reviews

• Chacko. M.A. (2020). South Asian Governmentalities: Michel Foucault and the Question of Postcolonial Orderings. Contemporary South Asia, 28(4), 533-534.  
• Chacko, M.A. (2016). Politics of Education in Colonial India by Krishna Kumar. Pacific Affairs, Volume 89, No. 4. The University of British Columbia.
• Chacko, M.A., & Ross, E.W. (2011). Re-visioning Global Education. Review of Kirkwood-Tucker, Toni Fuss (Ed.). (2009). Visions in Global Education: The Globalization of Curriculum and Pedagogy in Teacher Education and Schools: Perspectives from Canada, Russia, and the United States. Theory and Research in Social Education, 39(1), 148-157.

Courses developed and taught at Ahmedabad University

Schooling and Society (EDU 101)

This course examines how differences such as gender, caste, dis/ability and class become normalized in society, particularly through processes of schooling. Schooling in this course is understood as the social processes and interactions through which we teach and learn or are “schooled” into particular attitudes and perspectives on differences in society. A critical examination of the normalization of differences are considered crucial because of the ways in which these processes of normalization inscribe inequalities and injustices in society. 

Interrogating Disability in Culture and Education (SPS 252)

This course adopts a disability studies perspective to critically examine the lived experiences of young people with disabilities, particularly their interactions within educational institutions. Apart from a scholarly and interdisciplinary engagement with the historical marginalization, disability rights movement, current debates, and lived experiences of persons with disabilities, students undertake field visits to educational institutions in Ahmedabad to learn about the schooling experiences of young people with disabilities. 

Research Methods in Social and Political Sciences (SPS 201)

This broad and introductory course will familiarize students with how social and political scientists understand ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’ and the tools they use to produce knowledge about the real world.  This course will familiarize students with the philosophical underpinnings of social research and enable them to identify, compare and contrast different qualitative and quantitative research methods. While attending to quantitative approaches briefly, the major portion of this course will focus on qualitative research methods. As part of this course, students will be guided to design a research project which will prepare them for the course on qualitative field research and in turn to design and undertake research projects for their undergraduate thesis. 

Foundations Programme (Democracy and Justice)

Democracy and Justice is one among four interdisciplinary and immersive 4-week thematic courses attended by all incoming undergraduate students in their first year at Ahmedabad University. 

• 2023               Association for Asian Studies’ Cultivating the Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) Research Grant
• 2019- 2020    Spencer Conference Grant, Spencer Foundation, U.S.A. 
• 2017              Provost Doctoral Dissertation Grant, Teachers College, Columbia University 
• 2016              Taraknath Foundation Award, South Asia Institute, Columbia University
• 2016              Provost’s Grant for Professional Development, Teachers College, Columbia University
• 2016              Asia on Its Own Terms: Towards New Terminology and Narratives for Research in Asian Studies Doctoral Summer Scholarship, Tel Aviv University, Israel
• 2014-2015     AC4 Graduate Fellowship, Earth Institute, Columbia University
• 2013-2014     Dean’s Doctoral Research Fellowship, Teachers College, Columbia University 
• 2004-2005     Judy and Morris Fish Graduate Scholarship in Education, Concordia University

• American Anthropological Association (AAA)
• Comparative Education Society of India (CESI)
• Comparative and International Education Society (CIES)