Raji Swaminathan

Raji Swaminathan, Ph.D, is Professor in the Department of Educational Policy & Community Studies in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has served as Director of Doctoral Studies and Chair of the Department and is a recipient of the university’s Faculty Teaching and Faculty Research Awards.

She is an expert in qualitative research methods, has co-authored seven books on the subject, two of which (Collaborative Qualitative Research & Arts Based Research) have won awards in AESA (American Educational Studies Association) AERA (American Educational Research Association and at ICQI (International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. The book on Arts-Based Qualitative Research has recently been translated into Spanish. Her work in qualitative research integrates traditional data gathering and analyses with emerging methods including collaborative photovoice and arts based visual methods.

She believes in the use of qualitative research for deeper cultural understanding and for identifying problems, and synthesizing results that will lead to greater impact in different contexts. She has trained researchers to use innovative methods to analyze multi-modal data through contextual or theoretical coding and domain analysis. She has worked on NSF (National Science Foundation) grants with CORE (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Research Evaluation) as a qualitative evaluator for programs in higher education; has been part of expert teams for evaluating alternative schools and programs, has conducted workshops for teachers and students on data informed strategic decision making.