Ashna’s skills include:

• Designing national surveys and supporting the delivery of randomised control trials of evidence-based interventions.
• Analysing large datasets, producing visualisations, and conducting statistical analysis using SPSS and RStudio.
• Carrying out qualitative consultations with a wide range of participants, including policymakers, law enforcement, frontline professionals, children and young people, and adults with lived experience of abuse or harm.
• Writing literature reviews, evidence reviews, research reports, and policy briefs for government departments, think tanks, NGOs, and international organisations.
• Sharing research through accessible report formats, conferences, webinars, op-eds, and journal articles.
• Incorporating participant voice-informed and creative research methods into the project lifecycle.

Her recent projects include:

• A review examining how parenting and family therapy programmes can prevent youth violence in England and Wales, funded by the Youth Endowment Fund.
• A feasibility study of a multi-agency intervention for families affected by domestic abuse for Foundations – the What Works Centre for Children and Families.
• An implementation and process evaluation of a new programme aiming to increase the use of evidence-based parenting support in local areas, also for Foundations.
• A randomised control trial of a case management and mentoring programme for young people at risk of offending, funded by the Youth Endowment Fund.
• An evaluation of a custody-based intervention for young people aged 18-25, commissioned by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.
• An impact evaluation of a national programme for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to improve outcomes for people experiencing multiple disadvantage.
• An evaluation for London’s Violence Reduction Unit assessing how a support programme is improving outcomes for young people who have witnessed or been affected by domestic abuse and making recommendations to strengthen the wider support system around them.
• Evidence reviews estimating national data on children with complex needs, and assessing how education inclusion interventions can help prevent serious youth violence.

Ashna has an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, where she was an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) scholar. Before that, she delivered and managed research and evaluation projects across academia, government, and the nonprofit sector in South Asia. This includes work for the World Bank, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, and the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network. Ashna is an India-qualified lawyer and has contributed to human rights and public law research and litigation, including in capital defence trials.

Alongside her work, she continues to write on law and society, and is increasingly interested in how AI and technology can be used to prevent harm, both online and in the real world, for those most at risk.