Shankar Gugoloth is a Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant at the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. He completed his master’s in political science from the University of Hyderabad, Telangana, and his bachelor’s in technology in production engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli, Tamilnadu. Shankar's research interests include youth studies, education, youth aspirations, and politics. His work also elucidates the concept of “becoming” and the aspirations of marginalised youth through the idea of SWAEROS. In the past, Shankar held a senior tech associate position at the Bank of America, Hyderabad, for three years. His passion for social science led him to move from engineering to social science. He has written blogposts on various websites and presented his works at several national and international conferences.

Shankar’s doctoral thesis explores the question of the construction and cultivation of various identities within the single social category SWAEROS/ “The Society” students. He looks at aspiration formations among Dalit and tribal college-going youth (boys and girls) in Telangana, particularly among students enrolled in the Telangana Social Welfare Educational Institute Society (TSWREIS) schools in southern India. His doctoral work is ethnographic and uses visual ethnography to understand youth aspirations. TSWREIS is a state government-funded group of residential educational institutions for Dalit and tribal students in the state of Telangana.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, Shankar is engaging with some of the alumni of TSWREIS, to gain valuable insights into the experiences of marginalized students from the “Society'' schools studying or working in the U.S. This will help him to explore the role of TSWREIS in shaping aspirations of marginalized communities, and collaboratively write and interpret an ethnographic account of youth aspirations and state engagement with the marginalized community.