Isabel Salovaara

Isabel Salovaara joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as APARC Predoctoral Fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in Stanford's Department of Anthropology. Her dissertation, “Engendering the State: Aspiration, Government Jobs, and the Coaching Industry in Bihar, India,” analyzes the effects of organized exam preparation systems on urban life, gender and kin relations, and the politics of (un)employment. Through ethnographic engagement with young people preparing for government recruitment examinations in India, Isabel's work investigates the social life of "shadow education" — a burgeoning industry across much of Asia. Her research complicates the common framing of shadow education as a social ill by showing how young women and members of disprivileged caste groups harness India's coaching institutes to pursue forms of security and independence for themselves and their families.

Isabel received an A.B. in History from Harvard University and an M.Phil. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge.