Dr Meera Varadharajan
Dr Meera Varadharajan is a Research Fellow at Centre for Social Impact UNSW (CSI UNSW) . She is involved in measuring and evaluating social impact, with a view to helping people, community and organisations build their capacity so they have the tools to create change in their sector or organisation.
Meera joined CSI in early 2019 and has a lead role in managing and undertaking applied research and social impact projects in the area of education. She has also worked on a range of projects and evaluations, including youth mentoring; young Indigenous post-prison outcomes; social housing pathways and NGO leadership.
Meera is currently leading the Education Insights Report, as part of CSI's Amplify Social Impact initiative, which seeks to assist organisations across sectors to better understand and tackle issues around education inequity.
As a qualitative researcher Meera is passionate about connecting human stories and experiences in projects and program evaluations that serve as an enabler to drive purposeful social change in society. Her research interests include student wellbeing, teacher education, teachers’ lives, and educational philosophy.
Meera’s thesis, Understanding the lived experiences of second career beginning teachers, examined the experiences of career change teachers using an interpretive and phenomenological approach. Her doctoral and subsequent work on career change teachers has been recognised by leading teaching bodies and she has received external and internal research grants.
Meera has experience working in the business and education sectors in a wide variety of roles, and is a steering committee member of the Refugee Education Special Interest Group.
She is currently writing a book on career change teachers, due to be published by Springer.