Her interest in these areas has only deepened since graduating. After her original post-graduate employer, located in New York City, announced a hiring freeze, the freshly degreed Wildcat’s plans of getting some U.S.-based work experience and then applying to graduate school changed. She instead moved back to India and began working at a social impact consulting firm advising non-profits, followed by a move to the Mumbai-based organization Point of View (POV).
“At POV, I worked on projects building knowledge at the intersection of gender, sexuality and technology, specifically in the Indian context,” Kandhari said. “This has given me a thorough understanding of how the constituencies we work with — women from low-income backgrounds, sex workers, LGBTQ people and persons with disabilities — use and are impacted by technology. Through this work, I understand there are several factors that impede digital freedoms, including the gendered digital divide, family surveillance of use of digital devices, threat of technology-facilitated gender-based violence and cyber fraud, as well as improper safeguards for privacy and data protection.”
The experience exposed Kandhari to issues around ownership of technology, the consequences of how that ownership is connected to power and contributes to inequalities in the world.
“This work has been crucial to my knowledge and understanding, and it’s made me a better researcher, specifically in a non-academic organization,” she said, “which is much different from the research I did at Davidson.”
When Kandhari graduated from Davidson, she was recognized with the W.E.B. Du Bois Award for Excellence for her grasp of theory and methodology and excellent work through independent research. This award goes to a student demonstrating the skills and priorities that are central to sociology as a field of study and arena of advocacy.
