The three-year fellowship, titled '(Re)-constructing the state: rebuilding schools in post-earthquake Nepal' will be held at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OxGA).

Her fellowship will focus on the contested process of everyday state-building through a study on school reconstruction projects in post-earthquake Nepal. Taking ‘reconstruction’ as an analytic space of possibility, her research will investigate, firstly, the rebuilding of physical spaces and, secondly, the reconstruction of discursive spaces within which they are embedded, ie narratives about the (failing) state education system in Nepal.

This research will specifically focus on ‘aftermath epistemology’ to understand the ways in which a post-disaster shock is utilised to construct new visions for collective futures. By drawing attention to ongoing and new interventions by the state in spaces where everyday life is disrupted by a disaster, this aims to explore everyday practices of the state and the ways in which state is experienced, engaged with, and re-imagined by people.