Sarada Balagopalan is an Associate Professor of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University.  Broadly focused on postcolonial childhoods, Sarada’s research is directed at both challenging the exclusionary logics that often underlie humanist efforts around marginal children in the majority world, as well as generatively engaging these lives to decenter hegemonic assumptions around a normative childhood. Her current research is an ethnographic exploration of India’s much touted youthful “demographic dividend” with a particular focus on urban female youth, who are first generation school goers, and the complexities that frame their transitions from schooling to skilling.She is the author of Inhabiting ‘Childhood’: Children, Labour and Schooling in Postcolonial India (2014). She serves on the editorial board of Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research and is an Associate Editor for The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies.