Inika Murkumbi

I am interested in exploring neurodiversity as ordinary, socially embedded, and entangled with different forms of care. I am especially drawn to fieldsites that are actively grappling with transformation. My project aims to explore ideas and experiences of “notable difference” (a deliberately capacious term) in Delhi government schooling following 10+ years of large-scale change. These changes include the impacts of COVID-19, political shifts, and ambitious/controversial education reforms that have been labelled an ‘Education Revolution’. My framing of “notable difference" is flexible and non-label-based because I hope to explore differences within the classroom as fundamentally relational. I am especially interested in the tension between schooling as a key site to form children into particular kinds of persons/adults and schooling as a key site for children’s culture ‘in the now’. 

Prior to joining Stanford, I received a bachelor’s degree in Human, Social, and Political Sciences (Social Anthropology track) at the University of Cambridge. I then spent 2 years working in technology consulting for higher education institutions while pursuing my interest in neurodiversity research on the side.