Priya Raghunathan

Field session tutor and the week 8 lecturer. Twelve years in transport planning, most of them spent counting people who did not want to be counted.

Role

Field session tutor

Affiliation

Slop University, School of Invented Disciplines

Office

Pemberton Building, room 1.02, shared

Phone

+61 2 5550 3085

Email

priya.raghunathan@slop.university

Consultation

In the field session and for thirty minutes afterwards

At Slop since

2024

Elsewhere

• Staff profile
• Field site register

Message me before a field session if your site has fallen through. I keep a list of queues that will let you stand in them.

I plan crowd movement for stations and stadiums, which is the same job as planning a queue except that the consequences of being wrong are worse. I run most of the field sessions, which means I am the person who will tell you that your sample of eleven arrivals is not a sample.

Two things I will say to nearly everyone at some point in the semester. Measure the thing you can actually measure, not the thing you wish you could. And go back a second time, on a different day, before you believe anything.

What to ask me about#

Anything to do with a site. Permission, access, a manager who has said no, a shop that has closed, weather, safety, or a queue that turns out to be four queues. Ask in week 1 rather than week 6; almost everything is fixable early and almost nothing is fixable late.

Ask me about the clipboard as well. People are embarrassed to ask how to hold one, which is a shame, because it is a real question and it has a real answer.

Consultation#

I am in the field sessions and for half an hour afterwards. That half hour is the most useful thirty minutes in the course and almost nobody uses it.

Teaching this semester

Lectures

• The felt waitWeek 8

Field sessions

• Choosing your queueWeek 1
• The clipboardWeek 2
• The long tailWeek 3
• Counting serversWeek 4
• Watching the jumpWeek 5
• Filing for a numberWeek 7
• The waiting room auditWeek 8
• The post-mortemWeek 10
• The redesign studioWeek 11
• The defenceWeek 12

Interests

• Crowd movement in stations and stadiums
• Observation protocol and inter-observer agreement
• Perceived waiting time
• Why a sample of eleven is not a sample

Selected publications

• 2026Two observers, one queue, and the four boundary cases they disagree on. Slop University Working Papers in Applied Waiting.
• 2024Asking people how long they have been waiting. Journal of Invented Disciplines.

Awards

• 2026Sessional Teaching Award. Slop University Students' Association.
• 2022Practitioner Prize for Crowd Safety. Institute of Invented Transport.