Dr. Surbhi Dayal is a dynamic ethnographer and her research interests involve study of marginalised communities, sex-workers, dance bar girls and denotified tribes.
Dr. Dayal worked on creativity in primary education and explored the primary education system of UK during her Commonwealth Academic Fellowship tenure at King’s College, London. She combined her research interest with this experience for the development of schools for denotified tribes.
She is trained in a range of research methods at various prestigious institutes in India and United Kingdom.
Awards & Recognition
Dr. Dayal was awarded a doctorate by Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India for her multi-sited ethnographic study on the traditional entertainers community of peripatetic Kanjars. Her doctorate work is one of its kind as it vividly captures the travelling culture of Kanjars and is written in a narrative form. For her exemplary research work she received Commonwealth Split-site Scholarship and spent a year of her Ph. D. at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, United Kingdom.
Dr. Dayal was also a recipient of Commonwealth Academic Fellowship awarded by Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, United Kingdom. She was also awarded the prestigious Sir Dorabji Tata Fellowship for M.Phil. at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. Dr. Dayal did her masters in Sociology from the University of Rajasthan, India and graduated with top honors.
Work experience
Prior to joining IIM Indore, Dr. Dayal was a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at a post graduate college in the Department of College Education, Government of Rajasthan. She was also an approved research guide, University of Rajasthan. She is a consultant with regional study centre of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), Delhi. Dr Dayal is engaged in development of an educational model for children of sex-workers in association with a non-government organization (NGO) called Nirvanavan Foundation. Along with other likeminded people she founded an NGO, Ujaas, which works for betterment of marginalized people especially in the field of health and education.
