Pragya Agarwal
MA (York), PhD (Nottingham)
College roles
Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow
Biography
Professor Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and data scientist, who holds a PhD from The University of Nottingham, and a Masters from The University of York. Professor Agarwal has been a senior academic at various leading academic institutions around the globe, holding prestigious research fellowships from Leverhulme Trust, Royal Society and British Academy. Professor Agarwal is currently a visiting professor of social inequities and injustice at Loughborough University, with fellowships from Churchill Trust, British Library, Bodleian Library (Oxford), and Fulbright Commission. Professor Agarwal is also the founder of research think-tank The 50 Percent Project that examines global inequalities.
Besides numerous well-cited academic research papers, Professor Agarwal is also the author of four non-fiction books for general audience. Her book Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, that was Guardian and NYPL Book of the Week, is a seminal award-winning book in the area of bias and prejudice and how it manifests in many varied areas of our lives. (M)otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Women and Hysterical: Exploding the myth of gendered emotions, both nominated as one of best science writing, smart-thinking books, have shown how deftly she can combine personal, historical, analytical and contemporary research to tackle complex issues.
Her writing has also appeared widely in The Guardian, New Scientist, Wired, Scientific American. Times Literary Supplement, Literary Hub, Florida Review, amongst others. She regularly appears as an expert voice on NPR, ABC Q&A, BBC and Radio 5 Live, and various other podcasts and media platforms, as well as literary festivals such as Cheltenham, Hay, Edinburgh, and others. Last year, she headlined a festival in Melbourne and spoke at the All About Women at the Sydney Opera House.
Professor Agarwal has been awarded the Transmission Prize for 'making complex scientific ideas accessible' and Crucible NESTA award for 'innovative inter-disciplinary work', and funding from British Council, Society of Authors, and Royal Society of Literature for her writing and research.
Her twitter account is @DrPragyaAgarwal
Research Interests
Professor Agarwal’s recent work has been focussed on the science of bias and prejudice, and its impacts in various domains. Her work addresses systemic and structural inequalities, impacts and solutions. She has been working on the way legal biases impact minoritised communities, as well as the way bias is baked into AI and tech.
Professor Agarwal is currently working on her next book about feminist cartographies for The Bodley Head/PRH, as part of which she is also looking at archival gaps and silences. Her research has been supported by the Vartan Gregorian Centre for Humanities at NYPL, a British Library Eccles Centre Fellowship, and Sassoon Fellowship for Black and South Asian History at the Bodleian Library.