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Ahalya Ramgopal

Undergraduate Research Assistant
ar7@wellesley.edu 

Ahalya is an undergraduate research assistant with the Local Innovation Group, where she is supporting the Inclusive Systems Innovation project by conducting research on local innovators. She has been focused during the pandemic on remotely researching and writing a case study highlighting grassroots systems change and community organizing in the region of Appalachia. Her research focuses on how workers in Appalachia capitalized on their collective power and culture to reimagine and build a grassroots economy from the ground up; this work is facilitated by a project entitled the Letcher County Culture Hub.

Ahalya is currently a third-year at Wellesley College studying history with a concentration in political economy. She is particularly interested in the evolution of the global economic order, and its relationship to labor, state, and corporate power. Currently, she is looking at how the American imperialist project facilitated the rise of neoliberalism in Chile, and its influence on development imperatives in the nation. She hopes to translate her interest in social welfare, economic justice, and labor rights into a future career in policy or law.