Isabel Salovaara

Graduate Student Research Funding | 2023 - 2024 Academic Year

Government Jobs, Student Politics, and the Caste Census in Bihar, India

The state of Bihar in India is a historical and contemporary stronghold for both student protest and caste-based political organizing. This study investigates how these two modes of demanding economic development—on behalf of a general body of students (often aspiring to government jobs), or on behalf of unequally resourced caste communities—support or contradict one another. Through ethnographic and oral historical methods, this project examines how current and former student leaders have balanced competing demands of student unity and caste-based affirmative action in campaigns and protests that address youth unemployment.

Isabel Salovaara, Department of Anthropology

Isabel Salovaara is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford. Her research examines the lives of youth in Bihar, India. She is interested in the nature of aspiration, the effects of the test preparation industry, and the politics of competitive examinations for government employment. Prior to coming to Stanford, Salovaara completed her MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and her BA in History from Harvard University. She worked for two years as the Assistant Director of the Jindal Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at O.P. Jindal Global University in India. Her dissertation research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and a Fulbright-Hays grant.

Return to past recipients of graduate student research funding