NIRVED KUMAR

I am a final year PhD candidate at IIM Ahmedabad and a Mirae Asset Foundation Scholar, researching organizational innovations in higher education and youth skilling—such as fellowship programs and international university centres. My doctoral work focuses on the rise and influence of fellowship programs, informed by rigorous qualitative and quantitative methodologies. I am also co-authoring an academic book on Global Engagement Centres and the Internationalisation of Higher Education for Palgrave Macmillan, to be published in 2026.

My research has been published in international peer-reviewed journals and presented at leading conferences, including the Academy of Management (AOM), European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS), American Educational Research Association (AERA), Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE), and the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER).

I am currently working on an academic book manuscript for Palgrave Macmillan, exploring the role of international university centres in global higher education. My academic journey is deeply shaped by my own fellowship experiences, including roles as a Research for Impact Fellow at J-PAL South Asia, an Associate Fellow at the Delhi Assembly Research Centre, and a Gandhi Fellow at the Kaivalya Education Foundation. I am also an alumnus of the University of Chicago’s Anubhav lecture series program in South Asia. Additionally, I am pursuing the Global Early-Career Accelerator program, and have been awarded the 2 month visiting fellowship in 2025-26 at the University of Bath.

Beyond academia, I bring 3 years of hands-on professional experience in public administration and policy implementation, having worked across multiple levels of government—from the Centre to States/UTs and Districts—on diverse projects in education, governance, and development.

A graduate of Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) and a postgraduate from Delhi University, I am originally from Raipur, Chhattisgarh. I am driven by a passion to bridge policy, practice, and research in education and skill development for youth.

Proposed Thesis

Tentative title: "Sociopolitical Development of Youth: Roel and influence of fellowship programs"

Thesis Advisory Committee: Prof. Ankur Sarin (Chair), Prof. Ambrish Dongre - IIM A, Prof. Sangeeta Kamat- University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Recipient of several academic recognitions during my PhD:

Mirae Asset Merit Scholarship (2022) ($9,126).
University of Bath Global Early-Career Accelerator for Representation Programme (2025).
Best Thesis Proposal Award (2023) at the Doctoral Colloquium on Management and Development, Institute of Rural Management (IRMA), Anand ($240).
Travel grant awards to present at international conferences: American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, USA, 2024 ($620), UK Forum for International Education and Training, 2023 ($160), and International Research Society for Public Management, 2023 ($375) and 2024 ($372).
Outstanding Reviewer at Academy of Management conferences – Public and Nonprofit (PNP) Division (2025) and Management Education and Development (MED) Division (2023)

Contact Information:

Email ID's: phd20nirvedk@iima.ac.in | vermanirved@gmail.com

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Research on Fellowship Programs

I study fellowship programs in India as evolving institutional forms that mobilise youth to become socially conscious change leaders while embedding them in structurally complex roles. Through three essays, I map the landscape of fellowship programs, analyse the sociopolitical developmental outcomes of fellows, and examine how fellows navigate competing institutional logics.

The following manuscripts are under preparation from ongoing thesis work with Prof. Ankur Sarin

1. Mapping fellowship programs in India: Models and narratives of youth engagement

- Doctoral Colloquium on Management and Development, Institute of Rural Management, Anand, India (Nov 2023)

2. Sociopolitical development of fellows: Role and influence of fellowship programs

- American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, USA (April 2024)

3. Competing logics in fellowship programs: Fellows’ narrative accounts of tensions and navigational strategies

European Group of Organizational Studies, Milan, Italy (July 2024)

Research on International University Centers

I explore International University Centres (IUCs) as a distinctive organisational form within higher education internationalisation. This work examines how IUCs operate as intermediary entities, navigating global–local dynamics, fostering research collaborations, and advancing the international engagement strategies of universities.

Published peer-reviewed journal article

Kumar, N & Misra, D. (2024). International Centers of Overseas Universities in Global South: Lessons from India. International Higher Education, 120. PP. 17-18. https://doi.org/10.6017/895b9e0d.9d2b6db7 (Link)

Book under Pipeline

International university centres: An emerging approach to internationalisation of higher education with Debananda Misra, Submitted monograph proposal to Palgrave Macmillan

Research article under pipeline

“It is like we are the foot soldiers, and they are our generals”: Institutionalising inequality through research professionalisation with Debananda Misra. Selected for full paper submission to a special issue of Globalisation, Societies and Education.

Conference coverage

Research Methodologies

Projects:

- My ongoing research on international university centres adopts a qualitative case study approach.

- My doctoral work employs an interpretive lens and narrative analysis.

- I am comfortable working within interpretivist, post-positivist, and post-traditional paradigms, including critical discourse analysis.

Other works:

- Struggle for rights: Discourses on street vendors (Protection of livelihood and regulation of street vending) act 2014 in India with Vinay Jha (Data collection and analysis under process)

- XVII International Conference on Public Policy & Management, IIM Bangalore (Aug 2022)

- 5th International Conference on Public Policy, Barcelona (July 2021) (online)

Courses studied:

1 Methods of Qualitative Research: Gathering and Analyzing Data

2 Qualitative Methods (Research Methods 1)

3 Qualitative Research Methods in Education

Tools using: ATLAS.ti, MAXQDA, and Taguette

Projects:

- My doctoral work employs inferential and descriptive statistics. I collect primary data through a cross-sectional survey.

- In my work as a Research for impact fellow at J-PAL, I handled – collected, cleaned and analysed large-scale administrative and primary data.

- I am comfortable with Econometrics, causal analysis, structural equation modelling, inferential and descriptive statistics.

- Other work using Structural Equation modelling:

Kumar, N & Khan, F. (2024). Examining Transformational Leaders Alchemy in Teachers: An Integrative Moderated-Mediation Analysis. Academy of Management Proceedings 2024 (Link) Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Chicago, IL, USA (August 2024)

Courses studied:

1 Advanced Quantitative Techniques for Social Science Research

2 Applied Quantitative Techniques in Educational Research

3 Econometrics

4 Quantitative Methods (Research Methods 2)

5 Structural Equation Modeling

6 Using Quantitative Methods for Causal Inference in Social Policy Research

7 Designing and Running Randomized Evaluations by MITx

Tools using: SPSS, STATA, and R

Projects:

My ongoing thesis research on fellowship programmes adopts a mixed-methods approach.

My earlier work on college climate also employed a mixed-methods research design.

Conceptualizing and Measuring Indian Management College Climate

- Comparative and International Education Society, Washington, DC, USA. [February 2023, Online]

- Society for Research into Higher Education, UK. [December 2021Online]

Course studied: Research Approaches within Organisational Behaviour

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