New Visiting Professor joins the School of Social Sciences and Humanities

Loughborough University are excited to announce that Pragya Agarwal has been appointed as Visiting Professor of Social Inequities and Injustice within the School of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and data scientist, author, speaker, and a consultant. As a Senior Academic in US and UK universities, she has held the prestigious Leverhulme Fellowship, following a PhD from the University of Nottingham. Her publications are on reading lists of leading academic courses across the world.

Pragya is the author of (M)otherhood: On the choices of being a woman a hybrid memoir and scientific analysis of women’s fertility, and a timely examination of how political ideas of womanhood and motherhood are constructed. She is also the author of SWAY: Unravelling Unconscious Bias that examines how bias manifests in our brains, society and technologies, and ‘Wish we knew what to say: Talking with children about race’, a manual for parents, carers and educators of all backgrounds and ethnicities to talk to children about race and racism. Her next book ‘Hysterical’ is out in July 2022.

Pragya is the founder of a research think-tank ‘The 50 Percent Project’ works as a consultant and speaker with organisations around the world, with clients including the Cabinet Office, NHS, Environment Agency, Science Museum Boston, British Museum, UNESCO, United Nations, AstraZeneca, Oxford University, Springer Nature, Shell and The Guardian.  Other invited appearances include: The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (Atlanta USA), Cheltenham, Hay and Edinburgh International Literary Festivals. She will be also speaking at the Emirates International Literature Festival in 2022.


A passionate campaigner for women’s rights, and two-time TEDx speaker herself, Pragya organised the first ever TEDxWoman event in the north of the UK as well as a global South Asian Literary Festival. She is regularly invited as an expert on BBC Woman’s Hour, Radio 5 Live, BBC Asian Network, NPR and BBC Breakfast. As a freelance journalist, Pragya writes widely for The Guardian, The Guardian, New Scientist, Scientific American, Independent, Times Higher Education, Huffington Post, Prospect, Forbes, and many more.

Lisanne Gibson, Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities said:  

‘The School of SSH is delighted to welcome Pragya as a Visiting Professor, we are already benefiting from her contribution to debates in the School and indeed the wider University. We look forward to collaborating with her during her time with us’