Abhishek Vyas

Education (2023 cohort)

My research aims to develop a contextually relevant and effective approach to education for nonviolence and religious pluralism. I seek to understand how perceptions of nonviolence, tolerance, and compassion vary among young adults from different socio-economic backgrounds, and the cultural elements that shape these perceptions. The research focuses on two key questions: 1) how do young adults in Ahmedabad perceive nonviolence and religious pluralism? and 2) how can pedagogical tools, rooted in a community's own understanding of nonviolence, be co-created? While the immediate application of this work is to enrich peace education programmes, it also contributes to the fields of citizenship and human rights education. Ultimately, I aim to shift the focus from instances of violence to their ameliorators, offering a more nuanced understanding of cultural nonviolence and thereby guiding effective education policies.

I am a lawyer and educational researcher from Ahmedabad, India. I graduated with a BSc LLB (Hons) from Gujarat National Law University, where I organised legal literacy initiatives, focusing on school children, and conducted research at the Sabarmati Central Jail, studying prison conditions and bail issues for undertrial prisoners. I continue to teach legal literacy modules to inmates and offer law courses for journalists. I also collaborate with local journalists to create legal awareness content in Gujarati.

Post law school, I earned an MPhil in Education (Knowledge, Power and Politics) from the University of Cambridge, focusing on pedagogies of nonviolent action, examining the theories of Gandhi, Galtung, and Sharp. I co-chair the Cambridge Peace Education Research Group, promoting knowledge exchange among peace education scholars and practitioners, especially from the Global South. I also co-founded the Bansa Community Library, providing educational resources to thirty villages in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh.