Social Sciences

Leya Mathew is an Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences division of the School of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University. She has a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines the socio-cultural transitions that have accompanied economic liberalization in India. Her previous research examined non-elite private English schooling as a socio-political expression of aspiration in a new consumer society. Her current project traces youth aspirations in the context of precaritized work conditions.

She was also part of the research group at NIAS, Bengaluru, which explored the emergence of middle-class feminisms. She is a founder member of Penn camra at the University of Pennsylvania, an interdisciplinary collective of researchers and educators committed to multimodality in knowledge production. At Ahmedabad University, she pursues research and teaching in anthropology/sociology, gender, and intersectional inequality, with a specific focus on the Indian experience in the post market reform period.

My book English Linguistic Imperialism From Below examines how the socio-cultural transformations accompanying economic liberalization radically unsettled enduring social worlds to interrupt pathways of social reproduction and avenues of social mobility. It details the implications of this transformation for mothering practices and English education. This project was awarded an AIIS (American Institute of Indian Studies) Junior Fellowship Award and an NAEd/Spencer (National Academy of Education) Dissertation Fellowship.

My current project examines how youth masculinities and femininities are being reworked in contemporary India and how this affects higher education in technoscience. This project is supported by an NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship.

BOOK

Mathew, L. (2022). English linguistic imperialism from below: Moral aspiration and social mobility. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

• Mathew, L., & Martin, F. (2025). Gender and education mobilities in China and India: towards an inter-Asia comparative framework. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2025.2470598 

• Mathew, L. (2025). Work and language in times of aspiration. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2024-0062

• Mathew, L. (2024). The uses of education: young women negotiating migration, employment, and romance in Gujarat, India. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2024.2426381 

• Mathew, L. (2025). Merit and permission: Gender, education and migration in western India. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 51(5), 1413-1430. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2337036 

• Mathew, L. (2022). Festivalization of rigor: Productivity of masti [playfulness] at a pharmacy college in India, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 53(2), 167-186.  doi: 10.1111/AEQ.12412

• Mathew, L. (2022). The merit of medicine: Science aspirations in India, Cultural Studies of Science Education. 17(3), 701-726.  doi:10.1007/s11422-021-10088-y

• Mathew, L., & Lukose, R. (2020). Special issue introduction: Pedagogies of aspiration: Anthropological perspectives on education in liberalizing India. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 43(4): 691-704.

• Mathew, L. (2018). Mandated resistance, embodied shame: The material and affective contours of a TESOL method. TESOL Quarterly 52(4): 748-771. doi:10.1002/tesq.420

• Mathew, L. (2018). Aspiring and aspiration shaming: Primary schooling, English, and enduring inequalities in liberalizing Kerala (India). Anthropology and Education Quarterly. 49(1):72-88. doi:10.1111/aeq.12234

• Mathew, L. (2017). Betrayed futures: Uneconomic schooling in liberalizing Kerala (India). In A. Stambach and K. Hall (Eds.), Anthropological perspectives of student futures: Youth and the politics of possibility (103-118). London: Palgrave.

BOOK REVIEWS

• Mathew, L. (2025). “Indebted mobilities: Indian youth, migration, and the internationalizing university.” By Susan Thomas. Anthropology and Education Quarterly. doi: 10.1111/aeq.12542
• Mathew, L. (2020). “Jugaad time: Ecologies of everyday hacking in India.” by Amit S Rai. Contemporary South Asia, 28(4): 535-536. 
• Mathew, L. (2020). “Growing up in transit: The politics of belonging at an international school.” by Danau Tanu. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 26(1): 221-222.
• Mathew, L. (2019). “Village Tales” Film Director. Sue Sudbury. American Anthropologist. 121(1): 258-259. doi.org/10.1111/aman.13211    
• Mathew, L. (2018). “Childhoods in India: Traditions, trends, and transformations.” Edited by TS Saraswathi, Shailaja Menon, and Ankur Madan. International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development Bulletin. https://issbd.org/resources/files/JBD_42_3S_Combined.pdf
• Mathew, L. (2018). “Everyday conversions: Islam, domestic work, and South Asian migrant women in Kuwait.” by Attiya Ahmad. Contemporary South Asia. 26(1): 97-98. doi: 10.1080/09584935.2018.1433402
• Mathew, L. (2011). Book Note: “Security and suspicion: An ethnography of everyday life in Israel.” by Juliana Ochs. Journal of Peace Research 48(4). 

Undergraduate

• Gender and Work
• Identity, Inequality, Difference
• India in Transition

Graduate

• Ethnographies of Labor
• Dissertation Writing
• Anthropological/sociological Approaches to Heritage
• Visual Anthropology

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF EDUCATION/SPENCER FOUNDATION, 2019-21
Postdoctoral Fellowship USD 70000

SPENCER FOUNDATION, 2019-20
Conference Grant for Advancing Education Research USD 49868 with Mary Ann Chacko, Karishma Desai, R. Maithreyi, and Vidya Subramanian

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF EDUCATION/SPENCER FELLOWSHIP, 2015-16
Dissertation Writing Fellowship USD 27500

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INDIAN STUDIES, 2014
Dissertation Fieldwork Fellowship INR 539000