Newnham welcomes Dr Pragya Agarwal as Royal Literary Fund Fellow

Behavioural and data scientist, senior academic and writer Dr Pragya Agarwal has joined Newnham as our 2024-2025 Royal Literary Fund Fellow – here to support students across all disciplines through their writing concerns.

A behavioural and data scientist, whose recent work has been focused on the science of bias and prejudice, and its impacts in various domains. Pragya has been a senior academic at various leading academic institutions around the globe, is the author of four non-fiction books for general audience, and her writing has also appeared widely in The Guardian, New Scientist, Wired, Scientific American, Times Literary Supplement, Literary Hub, Florida Review, amongst others. 

The Royal Literary Fund Fellowship scheme was set up to place professional writers in higher education institutions to offer writing support to all students as Writing Fellows. Newnham has been fortunate to welcome many excellent writers over the years, from poets to biographers. We’re now delighted to welcome Pragya, who will be sharing her experiences and expertise with the Newnham community.

 

I really believe in the power of words to challenge, and create change, to process raw emotions, and sometimes our words are really all we have.

 

How would you describe your work?

All my work is interdisciplinary and grounded in intersectionality. I research and write about reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, about the impact of biases in legal domain, in technology and in leadership, about gendered emotions, about hysteria and medical misogyny and its impact on women’s health, about invisibility of women in history and science, and about violence against women and girls.  If I had to sum up my work, I suppose I would say that it attempts to challenge norms that disadvantage and margnalise some in our society and create new – as well as reinforce existing - biases and hierarchies. It sounds grandiose but really my aim is always to understand why these inequalities exist, what kinds of behaviours and language perpetuate and enable them, what does it mean for the choices and opportunities that are on offer to each of us (and the way we live), what does it mean for the way our systems and structures work (and are designed), and what we can and should do about the biases we carry individually and collectively in order to create a more just world.

How did you become a writer?

It sounds clichéd but I have always been a writer. We become a writer when we have an urgent, fervent desire to put down words, to communicate our ideas and inner thoughts to others. I was writing since I was a child, mostly just for myself, and most of it not very good either. Then I was an academic and writing is an integral component of being an academic. If we are talking about being a professional writer, I started writing opinion articles for newspapers such as the Guardian and other newspapers as a freelance writer in 2018, and then I was commissioned to write my first trade book by Bloomsbury in 2019. Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias was published in early 2020 in US and UK. Since then, I have written Wish We Knew What To Say: Talking With Children About Race (Dialogue Books, 2020), (M)otherhood: On the choices of being a woman (Canongate, 2021) and Hysterical: Exploding the myth of gendered emotions (Canongate, 2022). I am currently writing my next book to be published early 2026 on the invisibility of women in professional domains. I also write regularly for New Scientist, Scientific American, New Statesman, etc and have also more creative essays in literary journals such as Literary Hub, Florida Review, and others. I really believe in the power of words to challenge, and create change, to process raw emotions, and sometimes our words are really all we have.

Where and how do you write?

I write anywhere and everywhere I can find the headspace and time to do so. As a parent to two young children, and as someone who is juggling various different professional roles and commitments, it is impossible for me to have a set routine to write unlike some writers (mostly male) who assert that a regular fixed routine of 10-5 is important to succeed as a writer. During lockdown I was working on my book (M)otherhood and I had a full house with four-year old twins, a dog and a cat and so I used to go and hide behind the shed to write, sitting there squeezed in a tiny space besides the fence, until my children figured out where I was. I have written with a child under my desk, on the sofa, from bed, in the library, in the café, in my car. I think if we wait for some ideal conditions to write, we would never be able to do so. I also think that we can write in small chunks of time if that is all that is on offer to us rather than wait for an hour to free up to make a start. I sometimes use 5-10 mins of time to research things and make little notes in my phone app. It all helps. 

What is your writing secret?

I wish I had a secret. Mostly I am just figuring things out. But I suppose I don’t believe in limitations and boundaries, and I am always trying to challenge these in my writing. For instance, when I wrote (M)otherhood I wrote this as a hybrid memoir, using my own life as a lens but combining exhaustive scientific and historic research with it. I am also attempting to decolonise the frameworks we write within. For me this is very important, in not just what I read, who I refer to, but also how I write and who I assume is my reader. For instance, I don’t provide translations to any non-English words I use, and I don’t italicise these either. Being a good writer for me is also building trust with the reader and being authentic on the page.

What’s the one tip that you’d share with our students for their academic writing?

Plan, plan, plan. I am not a huge planner myself and I am always impatient to start. There are always time pressures. But taking a little time to understand the question and breaking it down can really help. It can help you structure your reading, as well as your writing. Another thing I would say is to always try and find the evidence for the argument. It is often not about being right, but about being able to support your argument with evidence and analyse what it really means for the broader question that you are trying to answer. And I know this is more than one tip, but don’t be afraid to be bold, and use your voice. Sometimes we can hide behind academic sources and other people’s voices. But academia is also about finding your own convictions and figuring out who you really are, and our writing should reflect this.