Faculty/Staff Directory

Gaurav Pathania

POSITION: Assistant Professor of Sociology & Peacebuilding

DEPARTMENTS:
Sociology
Center for Justice & Peacebuilding

LOCATION: Main Campus, Harrisonburg | RLN 225

PHONE: (540) 432-4435

Gaurav J. Pathania is an assistant professor of Sociology and Peacebuilding at ��ݮ�� in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Gaurav is an anti-caste scholar, poet and activist and served as a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the University of Southern California. His first book, (Oxford University Press, 2019), explores student resistance in higher education in India. Currently, his research focuses on the socio-political activism of the South Asian diaspora in the US and UK. Dr. Pathania serves as a deputy editor for , a journal published by SOAS, University of London. His social justice writings featured in and he has been interviewed by and BBC on diaspora issues in the United States. Gaurav won the national poetry award for 2016 organized by the Poetry Society of India. His anti-caste poetry appears in J-Caste journal published by Brandeis University. Gaurav made his Hollywood debut in Ava DuVernay’s film , portraying Dr. Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution. Gaurav and his team have embarked on a series of publications, including Caste & Race with Bloomsbury Publishing, and a new volume Time is Power: Temporalities and Caste.

ORCID ID:

LinkedIn:

Education

PHD, Jawaharlal Nehru University (Sociology)
MPHIL, Jawaharlal Nehru University (Sociology)
MA, Jawaharlal Nehru University (Sociology)

Publications
Zare, Bonnie & Gaurav J. Pathania (2025). 2025. ‘To resist, first we must see’: Unlearning Caste Privilege among University Students, . 89(6).
Zare, Bonnie; Pathania, Gaurav J, and M. Shahjahan. Invisibility of caste in everyday campus life: Indian American students and their understanding of privilege, Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2025.2460702
Pathania, Gaurav J. and Kalyani. 2024. “Contextualizing the Emergence of Dalit Studies in Academia,” in Jaoa Paraskeva (ed.) On Caste: Towards a Non-Derivative Curriculum Reason, Routledge: NY. [forthcoming]
Pathania, Gaurav J. and Nina Asher. 2023. “Racialization of Caste: Internal Colonization of Education in South Asia”, In J. Scott, M. Bajaj (eds.) , Routledge: USA
Pathania, Gaurav, Sushrut Jadhav, Amit Thorat, David Mosse, and Sumeet Jain. 2023. CASTE / A Global Journal on Social Exclusion 4 (1), 03-23.
Pathania, Gaurav J. 2021. “Regional Movements in Democracy: The Case of Telangana” in in P. D’Souza, H. Ahmed and S. Alam (eds.) , Routledge, UK.
Pathania, Gaurav J. 2020. , Critical Times, 3(3): 534-550. Duke Universtiy Press.
Thakur, N. & Pathania, Gaurav J. 2019. , In Suresh Babu GS (ed.) Education and the Public Sphere, Routledge: UK
Pathania, Gaurav J. 2018. Oxford University Press. [BOOK]
Pathania, Gaurav J. and Tierney, William G. 2018. Tertiary Education and Management, 24 (3): 221-231.
Pathania, Gaurav J. 2016. , South Asia Research, 36(2): 261-77
Other Presentations
2025: The Critical Pedagogy of Caste on Campus, , Pennsylvania [October 30]

2025: Understanding Caste on Campus, , Seattle. [February 25]

2024: Ambedkar Movement in North America, Birth Anniversary Celebration Committee of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Brampton, Canada [April 20]

2024: Eating in Public: Race, Caste and Food Practices across Differences, Department of South Asia Studies Colloquium, [February 7]

2023: Reclaiming Space, Challenging Narrative: The Role of Dalit Students Politics in Transforming the University. Organized by SOAS Student Union, University of London [May 17]

2023: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: A Global Perspective, Universtiy of Calgary, Canada [May 6]

2022: Presenting my paper titiled "Univesity and the Civil Sphere" @ the "Civil Sphere in South Asia" conference organized by Professor Jeffrey Alexander, Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University [October 21-22]
Professional Memberships
Southern Sociological Society [Annual]

Comparative International Educational Society (CIES) [Annual]

American Sociological Association [Annual]

DC Sociological Society [Annual]

Comparative Education Society of India [Life Member]
Courses Taught
Introduction to Sociology

Global Social Movements

Globalization and Justice

Theories of Social Change

Sociology of Health

Transformational Leadership for Social Change

Sociology of Caste and Class

Nonviolent Mobilizing Action

Community Organizing Social Action

Understanding Violent Conflict

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