Esther Priyadharshini is Professor of Educational Futures at the School of Education & Lifelong Learning.  She is the Director of Research in the school and co-leader of the Cultural Studies in Education research group. Esther completed her Ph.D from Lancaster University and previously graduated from Bharatidasan and Madras Universities, India. Esther curently teaches and supervises across several programmes in education - BA, MRes, PhD and EdD. 

Prof. Esther Priyadharshini’s research is located in the intersection of futures studies, youth studies and education. She is interested in how processes of education, learning and research can be made to respond to social/global challenges and support the making of more desirable futures. To do this, she draws on feminisms, postcolonialism, new materialisms, and post humanist perspectives. She is interested in experimental and innovative approaches to research methodology (non-representational, speculative approaches and participatory persepectives). 

Her recent (2021) book, "Pedagogies for the Post Anthropocene" was awarded the Runner Up Prize for the CIES 2022 Book Award, Globalisation & Education SIG.

Recent Publications

Priyadharshini, E. (2024). Speculative Method-Making for Feminist Futures: Insights from Black Feminist Science and Afrofuturist Work. Australian Feminist Studies, 1–18. 

Priyadharshini, E., (2023) 'Decolonizing Citational and Quotational Practices as Reparative Politics', (199-219) In, Decolonizing Education for Sustainable Futures, Eds. Y. Hutchinson, A. Ochoa, J. Paulson, L.Tikly, Bristol University Press. 

Priyadharshini E., (2021) Pedagogies for the post-Anthropocene: Lessons from Apocalypse, Revolution & Utopia, Springer Press.

Jere, C., Robinson-Pant, A., Priyadharshini, E., Millora, C., & Evren, B. (2021). Cooperation, collaboration and compromise: Learning through difference and diversity. Educational Action Research.

Priyadharshini, E. (2020). 'Re-imaginging futures, education and learning relations' in Humanist Futures: Perspectives from UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN Networks on the futures of education. Paris, UNESCO.

Priyadharshini, E., (2019) 'Anticipating the apocalypse: Monstrous educational futures'. Futures 113 (2019), 102453. 

Esther Priyadharshini & Amy Pressland (2018) Analysis as assemblage: making sense of polysemous texts, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 35:5, 420-439.

Educational Futures; Posthumanism, Postcolonial and feminist theory; post-qualitative research, speculative methods, participatory approaches.

Prof. Priyadharshini contributes to teaching across UG, PG and doctoral programmes. She is the EDU lead for the MRes in Social Sciences. She also leads the BA year 3 module ''Understanding Childhoods: Society, Politics and Culture"