Bhavani Arabandi is a principal research associate in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute. She is a labor sociologist whose work focuses on enduring inequalities in the labor market, women’s labor force participation, gender, apprenticeship, and international development. Her expertise is in program design and implementation, qualitative methods research, policy analysis, and technical assistance.

Before joining the Urban Institute, Arabandi worked as a program analyst at the US Department of Labor. She was selected as a fiscal year 2020 CXO Fellow and received the secretary’s award for outreach and training. Before joining the federal service, Arabandi was an academic with extensive experience at public and private universities. She was awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award in Teaching and Research and was a postdoctoral research fellow at Rice University. She has published in major journals and has received several awards for her research.

Arabandi has a MSW from the Tata Institute of Social Work, Mumbai, and grassroots experience working with women’s groups in rural India. She also has a MA in sociology from George Mason University and a PhD in sociology from the University of Virginia.