| Post: | Research Student |
| Location: | |
| Email: | D.Sancho@sussex.ac.uk |
Role
DPhil Candidate
Qualifications
David Sancho received a degree in Anthropology (2003) from the University of Florida, an MA (2005) in International Relations and International Law from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, and an MSc in Comparative and Cross-Cultural Research Methods (2009) from the University of Sussex. In 2007, David was awarded a Departmental Studentship to come to Sussex, where he is currently a Research Student.
Research
My DPhil research project is an ethnographic study of the relationship between contemporary forms of education and the life experiences and future prospects of young people within liberalized Kerala, South India. Processes of liberalisation have dramatically transformed the way people practice and think about education. In Kerala, it has resulted in a gradual state retreat from the educational sector and a growth of a highly fragmented system of private education oriented towards the exigencies of the global labour market. Youth's lives and aspirations are increasingly encouraged to be understood in terms of the pursuit of ‘marketability' or as the acquisition of competitive knowledge to be sold in the global market. My study will, on the one hand, explore the new elements that have entered the idea of education, and whole sets of old and new practices aimed at fashioning twenty-first century (educated) selves. On the other hand, it will look at the ways young men and women negotiate their way through contemporary educational regimes and towards the futures they imagine. With this I hope to shed light on new forms of marginalisation and opportunities of mobility young people from diverse social positions encounter in a context of rapid social and economic change. Contrary to some recent works, my research will not simply assume that market-oriented policies and discourses of education, and the subjectivities contained within them, will produce a new generation of ‘neoliberal' students. On the contrary, we must pay attention to the far-from-predictable ways youth and their families shape the meaning of education as part of their strategies to move towards their imagined futures.
My DPhil work is being supervised by Dr. Geert De Neve and Dr. Filippo Osella.
Publications
Documentary Screening
2004 "Shifting Blame", a video-documentary exploring development encounters in the Chiapas Highlands by David Sancho. Florida Anthropological Student Association Colloquium (FASA).
2003 "Shifting Blame", a video-documentary exploring development encounters in the Chiapas Highlands by David Sancho. Risk Cinema at the Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL, presents "Late Shift": A public screening from the fall (2003) video production program.