r.i.c.e.

Research fellow

Payal is a PhD student in Demography and Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Research Fellow at r.i.c.e. Her research interests center on social inequality and health. Her current work focuses on the poor measurement of stillbirth as a form of mortality in India and other low and middle-income countries. She has also written on issues of gender, caste, and religion, and health in India, including on the cultural reasons why open defecation persists in rural India, the relationship between casteist attitudes and hygiene in public hospitals, and the experiences of discrimination faced by Dalits and Muslims.

Originally from southern California, Payal holds a BA in Economics from UC Berkeley and an MPA from Princeton University.