Lakshmi Jayaram is President of the Inquiry Research Group LLC and Policy Fellow in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland – Baltimore County. Dr. Jayaram is also holds a courtesy faculty appointment in Sociology at the University of South Florida, serves as adjunct faculty in Political Science at the University of Tampa, and as a guest lecturer for the Workshops on Social Science Research series at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Jayaram specializes in qualitative and mixed methods research, with a focus on education, social disparities, and policy-relevant studies. Her publications include peer-reviewed articles and a collaborative book under review, Unequal Contexts: The Pursuit of Social Mobility amid Precarity and Security. 

Dr. Jayaram is Co-Principal Investigator of PathTech LISTEN, a longitudinal education study funded by the National Science Foundation to explore educational and occupational pathways taken by technician students at two-year colleges. Dr. Jayaram leads the qualitative data collection effort and is currently working on analyses about non-traditional-aged students, women, students with disabilities and military veterans, as well as the current  impact of COVID-19 on school, work, and family experiences of study participants. Dr. Jayaram also recently partnered with Dr. Marilyn Barger of the Florida Advanced Technological Education Center to survey engineering technology students state-wide about their transition to remote learning during the Spring and Summer of 2020.

In addition to her work about advanced technology programs at two-year colleges, Dr. Jayaram is Co-Investigator of two federally-funded child welfare evaluation studies and a regional study about women candidate’s experiences running for public office. Dr. Jayaram also worked at the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech during the center’s infancy after the mass tragedy, and led community-engaged participatory research and related curriculum development. Prior to academia, Dr. Jayaram worked at The White House, the Department of Justice, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Department of Defense. She received her master’s degree in public policy from the University of Chicago and her doctorate in sociology from Johns Hopkins University.