Vedika Kedia is a doctoral student at the Department of Education. Her research interests broadly include research on research, policy framework, higher education and comparative international education.
She has experienced the field of university education from varied geographical lenses having read at six world renowned institutions starting from her Bachelor of Arts at Lady Shri Ram College for Women (LSR), University of Delhi. Here, she received the Best Student Prize and had the distinctive feat of being a part of an international programme during each year of her course.
Vedika represented LSR at National University of Singapore on a one-year undergraduate exchange where she read modules under the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She pursued International Relations at King’s College London India Summer School. Her second exchange was a masters level programme at Sciences Po Paris where she was part of the prestigious Paris School of International Affairs.
After a brief stint at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi just prior to the pandemic, Vedika pursued a Master in China Studies majoring in International Relations and Politics as a Yenching Scholar at the Peking University, Beijing. The programme was funded by the Chinese Government Scholarship Council. At Yenching Academy, she studied courses from varied disciplines and adopted her Chinese name “柯雅文”. For a paper on 'China in Transition', she explored the factors that influence the access of rural students to universities in China and defended her thesis on 'The China Factor in India's Participation of International Nuclear Non Proliferation Regime'.
Thereafter, Vedika joined University of Oxford for a second master programme. She completed Master of Science in Higher Education and was awarded a distinction for her dissertation on 'Social Science Research in India: Traversing the "Global" and "Local" Terrain'.
Apart from academics, Vedika has keen interests in extra-curricular activities. She is a part of different committees in the department and college. She is a member of the Oxford University Badminton team and Speakers Committee of The Oxford Union, the foremost debating society in the world. She has a knack for debating having represented her alma maters in the capacity of debater, adjudicator, organiser and convenor for tournaments of national and international acclaim.
Vedika Kedia is serving as Director for Young China Watchers, London Chapter. She has worked as a researcher on projects for Centre for Global Higher Education and British Council. She is co-authoring a publication on African doctoral students' experiences in Chinese universities.
DPhil topic
Vedika’s DPhil study focuses upon India and China which is slated to constitute one-third of the world population. It explores the role of indigenous knowledges in contemporary university systems, education policy and research. She intends to understand the research landscape prevalent across disciplines in sciences and social sciences. With her expertise in both the countries coupled with learning endeavours in premier institutions of knowledge production, she has a unique vantage point to make a significant contribution to literature. Her study is supported by The Asian Studies Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford.
