Course: Doing Ethnography

Kalpana VIGNEHSA is Senior Research Fellow in the Governance and Economy department at the Institute of Policy Studies. She is an expert in qualitative and ethnographic methods and works on topics related to immigration and families. Before returning to Singapore and joining IPS in 2020, she led the User Research team within R&D at the Australian Consumer Association. They worked to cultivate responsible business behaviour and empower consumers to better protect themselves. Kalpana worked on projects related to housing, the circular-economy, ageing, and energy affordability.

Prior to this, Kalpana was Assistant Professor at UTS Business School. Her research focused on “stuckedness”— our persistence with practices that are non-generative, or even counterproductive. She also taught in the Executive MBA, the MBA, and Undergraduate programmes.

Kalpana received her PhD in Organisational Sociology from the University of Technology Sydney. She also holds a Bachelors of International Business and a BA with Honours in Political Science and International Relations from Macquarie University.