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Dagar, Preeti
About
Research Interests
Adult education, Education policy, Gender inequalities in education and employment, International Development, Migration, Postcolonial perspectives, Refugee education and integration, TVET
Research Supervision Interests
Bio
Preeti is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies, Faculty of Education, at the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining UBC, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Glasgow. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Adult Education and Urban Studies from the University of Glasgow.
Preeti’s research focuses on skills development, sustainable livelihoods, decent work, and social inclusion among marginalized populations in the Global South, including refugees and Indigenous communities.
Her professional experience spans international and community-based organizations, including UNIDO (Austria), the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (Germany), grassroots organizations in India, and refugee organizations, bringing practice-based perspectives to her teaching and research.
Research
Referred Publications
Dagar, Preeti (2025) Who can choose to aspire higher? Complex interlinkage of refugee education and aspirations in Global South. Globalisation, Societies and Education, (doi: 10.1080/14767724.2025.2537922)
Dagar, Preeti (2024) Building sustainable and decent refugee livelihoods through adult education? Interplay between policies and realities of five refugee groups.British Educational Research Journal, 50(2), pp. 713-731. (doi: 10.1002/berj.3943)
Dagar, Preeti (2024) Evaluating and reframing vocational education and training for refugees: Insights from five refugee groups across three cities of India. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 54(1), pp. 110-127. (doi: 10.1080/03057925.2022.2078957)
Dagar, Preeti (2023) Rethinking skills development and entrepreneurship for refugees: The case of five refugee communities in India. International Journal of Educational Development, 101, 102834. (doi: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2023.102834)
Dagar, Preeti (2022) Vocational education and training for indigenous women in India: toward a participatory planning approach. International Journal of Training Research, 20(1), pp. 43-57. (doi: 10.1080/14480220.2021.1959379)
Dagar, Preeti (2019) Adult education In India from a subaltern perspective.Postcolonial Directions in Education, 8(1), pp. 61-77.
Book
The GLACIER Collective. (2026). Comparative and International Education: Key Questions, Tensions and Opportunities. Bristol: Bristol University Press. (Collective-authored book; Preeti Dagar is one of the contributing authors.)
Book Chapters
Sharma, Namita and Dagar, Preeti (2024) Critiquing the concept of ‘self-reliance’ in informal sector training: a case study of Afghan refugee women in India. In: Powell, Lesley, Cooper, Adam, Brown, Trent and McGrath, Simon (eds.) Learning for Livelihoods in the Global South: Theoretical and Methodological Lenses on Skills and the Informal Sector. Series: Routledge Research in International and Comparative Education. Routledge. ISBN 9781032626475
Dagar, Preeti and Khurshid, Kainat (2024) Adult education in a postcolonial world.In: Slade, Bonnie, Mayo, Peter and Bogossian, Thi (eds.) Adult Education and Difference. Series: International issues in adult education (36). Brill: Leiden, pp. 246-257. ISBN 9789004692619 (doi: 10.1163/9789004692626_015)
Dagar, Preeti (2023) Subaltern perspectives in adult education. In: Deb, Prasenjitand Bhattacharya, Asoke (eds.) Adult Education in India. Series: International issues in adult education (35). Brill, pp. 160-173. ISBN 9789004688780 (doi: 10.1163/9789004688780_010)
Slade, Bonnie and Dagar, Preeti (2023) Tracing longitudinal impact of Professor Lalage Bown: international master in adult education for social change. In: Slowey, Maria, Hinzen, Heribert, Omolewa, Michael and Osborne, Michael (eds.) Adult Education and Social Justice: International Perspectives. Series: Studies on adult learning and education (17). Firenze University Press, pp. 269-279. ISBN 9791221502527 (doi: 10.36253/979-12-215-0253-4.27)
Dagar, Preeti and Sharma, Namita (2022) Education and lifelong learning for refugees: Equity and inclusion in policy and practice. In: Rajan, S. Irudaya (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Refugees in India. Routledge: London ; New York, pp. 318-330. ISBN 9780367531096 (doi: 10.4324/9781003246800-28)
Podcasts and Invited Scholarly Engagements
Nasir, Ramzi and Dagar, Preeti (2025) Adult Education: Exploring the inequalities in the world’s most populated country. [Audio]
Moskal, M. , Odena, O. , Arizpe, E. , Gormally, S. , Pacheco, E.-M. , Dagar, P. and Aldegheri, E. (2021) Education, Culture and Learning in Response to Conflict and Protracted Crisis [Symposium]. Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) 65th Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, 25-29 Apr 2021.
EDST Activity
Students Supervised
Courses taught
Additional
Dissertation Writing Support Sessions – Fall 2026
Below is a table with the dates of this term’s writing sessions which will begin October 3rd running most Saturdays 10am to 2pm. There may be some evening sessions added if I sense enough interest.
For newcomers to these sessions, there is no registration; you just need to show up😊. You are welcome no matter where you are in the process including completing course work, preparing for the comps, writing proposals, drafting and revising chapters etc.
We follow this structure: 15’ check-in (sometimes longer if questions arise) then 3 to 4 writing sessions of about 40’ each with audio and visual turned off, with a 5’ break between. Sessions conclude with a check-out.
The goals of these sessions including keeping you connected during the dissertation process which can feel isolating, carving out a space out of your busy schedules for writing (reading and thinking), demystifying the dissertation process which is non-linear, iterative with times of joy and difficulty, and joining/creating a writing community.
We’ll use this zoom link: :
https://ubc.zoom.us/j/69978066117?pwd=UGpPR1FXOCtpYXYrMkc2VFowQ0Vjdz09
Please contact Shauna Butterwick for more information: shauna.butterwick@ubc.ca
| Date | Day | Time | Session |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 03, 2027 | Saturday | 10 am – 2 pm | ✅ |
| Oct 10, 2027 | Saturday | 10 am – 2 pm | ✅ |
| Oct 17, 2027 | Saturday | EdD Institute | * |
| Oct 24, 2027 | Saturday | 10 am – 2 pm | ✅ |
| Oct 31, 2027 | Saturday | 10 am – 2 pm | ✅ |
| Nov 07, 2027 | Saturday | 10 am – 2 pm | ✅ |
| Nov 14, 2027 | Saturday | 10 am – 2 pm | ✅ |
| Nov 21, 2027 | Saturday | 10 am – 2 pm | ✅ |
| Nov 28, 2027 | Saturday | 10 am – 2 pm | ✅ |
| Dec 05, 2027 | Saturday | 10 am – 2 pm | ✅ |
| Dec 12, 2027 | Saturday | 10 am – 2 pm | ✅ |
*there is a possibility of a writing session during the EDD institute
New Publication “Defiance, Advocacy, and Sovereignty: First Nations Child Welfare, the ‘Native Conferences’ and the 1974 Royal Commission on Family and Children’s Law in British Columbia”
New Publication!
Mona Gleason, “Defiance, Advocacy, and Sovereignty: First Nations Child Welfare, the ‘Native Conferences’ and the 1974 Royal Commission on Family and Children’s Law in British Columbia” BC Studies 230 (Summer, 2026): 11-32.
Abstract: This article highlights the contributions of Indigenous participants to a series of Native Conferences that took place around BC in 1974 as part of the consultation process undertaken by the Royal Commission on Family and Children Law (RCFCL). Struck by the NDP government and chaired by Justice Thomas Berger, and Commission sponsored seven Conferences around the province to gather feedback from Indigenous people on a range of social service and law related topics. While the RCFCL promised to radically change how child welfare operated in the province, the Conference recommendations were shelved with the NDP’s election loss of 1975. I argue that despite this, the Indigenous recommendations remain a critically important archive of defiance, advocacy and sovereignty in the midst of settler colonial violence in the realm of child welfare. This history also serves as a cautionary tale about the uncritical use of ‘the best interests of the child’ principle for historians, particularly those in the field of the history of children and youth.
