Category: Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Exploring Queer and Trans Community Building in Post-NALSA and Post-377 India: Insights from Sayantan Datta, Neha Mishra, and Dr Pushpesh Kumar

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice,Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP), Krea University, Neha Mishra, Assistant Professor of Practice, Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP), Krea University and Dr Pushpesh Kumar, Associate Professor; Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, co-author a paper titled Queer and trans community building in post-NALSA and post-377 India: a critical reflection, published in the Community Development Journal (Oxford University Press).

In this paper, the authors trace (a) the challenges faced by queer and trans communities and (b) challenges to queer and trans community building in contemporary India by tracing recent developments in the contexts of health, public policy, jurisprudence, social institutions, education, popular culture, and the precarity of gender and sexually transgressive communities during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. They also look at narratives of hope that demonstrate how queer and trans people in post-legal reform India continue to build enabling and affirmative communities in the face of an increasingly neoliberalizing country. This article serves as an introduction to the upcoming special issue of Community Development Journal (Oxford University Press) of the same name, edited by Dr Pushpesh Kumar, Sayantan Datta, and Neha Mishra.

Read the paper here.  

Dr Mitaja Chakraborty Delivers Presentations at Three Academic Forums

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Mitaja Chakraborty, Visiting Assistant Professor, Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP) at Krea University recently delivered presentations at prestigious academic forums. 

Dr Chakraborty presented the paper titled Some methodological concerns: life making and meaning making in the local garment activism spaces in Dhaka at the Workshop on Pluralising Social Reproduction Approaches, organised by the European Council for Political Research & Leuphana University, Lüneburgm on 25–28 March, 2024. 

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At the 64th Indian Society for Labour Economics Conference, organised by the Department of Economics, University of Hyderabad on 29–31 March, 2024, Dr Chakraborty presented the paper titled Networks of care: work, labour and love in Dhaka.

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Dr Chakraborty also delivered an invited talk titled Many lives of Labour: an inquiry into the methods of exploring work at the International Conference on Celebrating 100 years of Sociology in India, organised by the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, on 1-3 April, 2024. 

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Dr Anannya Dasgupta, Neha Mishra, Sayantan Datta and Dr Vivek Tewary to Deliver Presentations at the Critical Writing Pedagogies Symposium at Ashoka University

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Anannya Dasgupta, Neha Mishra and Sayantan Datta from the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP) at Krea University, and Dr Vivek Tewary from SIAS, Krea University will be part of the Critical Writing Pedagogies Symposium on How can writing pedagogies build critical thinking among students in higher education? organised by Ashoka University on 6–7 April, 2024. 

Dr Anannya Dasgupta, Director, Centre for Writing & Pedagogy (CWP) at Krea University and Associate Professor of Literature, SIAS, Krea University will conduct a writing workshop at Ashoka University entitled Giving Feedback for Revision: A Writing Pedagogy Essential on 5 April, 2024 as a pre-event to their 2-day writing symposium. 

Dr Anannya Dasgupta will also deliver the Opening Keynote address, “Is it a thing yet?”: Writing Pedagogy in India. Neha Mishra, Assistant Professor of Practice, CWP, will speak on Cultivating Dispositions for Critical Thinking: Networks of Support & Feedback in Writing Pedagogies. Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice, CWP will deliver a talk titled A Neuroscientist Takes on Writing Pedagogy. Sayantan Datta and Dr Vivek Tewary, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, SIAS, Krea University will spek on Form and Formula – Reflections on Teaching Technical & Journalistic Writing in Mathematics. 

This workshop will be attended by faculty of the Undergraduate Writing Programme (who teach the first year writing courses), members of the Centre for Writing and Communication, Teaching Fellows, and interested faculty members from different departments eager to gain insights into effective strategies for addressing their students’ writing-related needs. 

For more details, click here and here.

Dr Suresh Govindapuram and Christon Thomas present a paper at the 64th Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE)

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Suresh Govindapuram, Assistant Professor of Economics, IFMR GSB, Krea University and Christon Thomas, PhD Student, IFMR GSB, Krea University have presented a paper on Women’s Financial Inclusion and Economic Development: Evidence from India at the 64th Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE). The Conference was held on 29-31 March, 2024 at the University of Hyderabad, and was organised by the School of Economics, University of Hyderabad in collaboration with the Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Hyderabad, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), Hyderabad and the Council for Social Development (CSD), Hyderabad. 

For more information on the ISLE conference, click here.

Read the Abstract here. 

Sathyanarayanan Ramachandran writes about the phenomenon of overtourism in The Hindu BusinessLine

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Sathyanarayanan Ramachandran, Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor, Marketing, IFMR GSB, Krea University authored a guest article in The Hindu BusinessLine, titled Tourist boom-turned-bane. Trampled by overtourism. The article sheds light on the phenomenon of overtourism and emphasises the need for sustainable destination marketing. 

Read the article here. 

On the Face of It: From Monumental Images to Collective Actions – A Paper Presentation by Dr Rakshi Rath and Dr Srajana Kaikini

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight


Dr Rakshi Rath, Assistant Professor of Psychology, SIAS, Krea University, and Dr Srajana Kaikini, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, SIAS, Krea University co-presented their paper titled On the Face of It: from Monumental Images to Collective Actions at the Workshop Seminar Twenty-First Century Media? Affective Bodies, Crowds, and Collectives, organised by ICAS:MP TM 7 module, in collaboration with CSDS and Sarai, on 21-23 March, 2024. 

This international workshop was focused on site-specific contributions mapping 21st-century media, addressing material and environmental questions for media and political aesthetics. The paper brings theories of Philosophy and Psychology in critical conversation with each other around social ontology, media aesthetics, and political psychology in an attempt to forge new interdisciplinary frameworks for social action.

Exploring Purpose, Permanence, and Sustainability: Sathyanarayanan Ramachandran Delivers a Talk at the NBS Global Webinar

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Sathyanarayanan Ramachandran, Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor of Marketing at IFMR GSB, Krea University, gave a talk on his Purpose, Permanence and Sustainability teaching intervention in the Product and Brand Management elective course of IFMR GSB’s MBA programme during the NBS Global webinar held on 19 March, 2024. 

He was invited by the Network for Business Sustainability (NBS), powered by the Centre for Building Sustainable Value at the Ivey Business School at Western University, to present this as a part of their Teaching Climate Change in Business Schools Virtual Event Series.

In this module on Teaching Climate Policy and Negotiations in Business Schools, he described his practice of a sensitisation workshop incorporating the idea of the economy of permanence of the Gandhian economist J C Kumarappa and the deep purpose continuum of the Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati, followed by the hands-on ENROADS climate action simulation of Climate Interactive and MIT Management Sustainability Initiative. The ideas were well received and appreciated by the audience.

Dr Shyam Kumar Sudhakar delivers a talk at IIIT Hyderabad

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Shyam Kumar Sudhakar, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, SIAS, Krea University delivered a talk titled Application of computational modeling and large-scale data analysis for identifying drugs and managing comorbidities after traumatic brain injuries at IIIT Hyderabad.

Abstract:

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) constitute one of the biggest public health problems facing the world population. Physical trauma to the brain could lead to the damage and subsequent death of the affected neurons, and this could continue for extended periods, causing secondary brain injuries. As a consequence, TBI can cause long-term medical and psychiatric problems. No treatment options exist to date to prevent the cascade of secondary brain injuries.

When promising therapeutic options are unavailable to treat TBI, carefully crafted patient care programs and disease prevention strategies could lead to better patient experiences. The goal of my research program is twofold: Construct a detailed bio-simulation platform encompassing post-TBI changes at multiple spatial and temporal time scales to identify the most promising therapeutic agents for neuroprotection after TBI; Perform large-scale data analyses of multi-center patient databases to understand the unique pattern of post-traumatic comorbidities as a function of different injury parameters (sex, age, type and severity of injury, years post-injury, socioeconomic status). In this talk, I will illustrate my recent research results pertaining to computational modeling and large-scale mining of patient databases. I believe my dual approach of computational modeling and large-scale data analysis would lead to the discovery of novel drugs and drug combinations to treat the disease and devise vital patient care programs.

Dr Rama Devi delivers an invited lecture at Saveetha School of Law, Chennai, and co-authors a paper published in the Sociological Bulletin

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Rama Devi, Visiting Assistant Professor, SIAS, Krea University, delivered an invited lecture titled Domesticity and Autonomy: Occupational Imageries and Employable Skills of Educated Dalit Women, at the National Seminar on Gendering Social Relations: Caste, Wage Work, Literature and Law organised by Saveetha School of Law, Chennai.

About the Talk 

Education is conceived as a powerful and political instrument to gain autonomy, agency, and empowerment for marginalised communities. For women, it holds the promise of liberation from their economic dependence on men by creating several possibilities to gain economic independence, assertive expression of voice, and navigating the tight grasp of patriarchal norms in their everyday lives. This lecture traces how education intersects with gender, norms of domesticity, and modern occupational aspirations to reproduce the ideal of respectable women in the neo-liberal economy.

Dr Rama Devi has also co-authored a paper with Dr Sawmya Ray, IITGuwahati. Titled We Know What is Good for Her: Hunar and Respectable Work for Women, the paper has been published in the Sociological Bulletin. 

Abstract 

Education is often conflated with women’s empowerment. Access to formal education is considered to possess the potential to usher in the elimination of the imposed dependence of women on men by enhancing their employability and easing their entry into the labour market. This article argues that establishing such simplistic interconnections evades hidden constraints of sociocultural conditions entwined with patriarchal ideologies that influence and even partially prohibit women’s access to education vis-a-vis employment, resulting in their marginalisation in the labour market. Examining the nature of educational access and occupational aspirations, of urban women residing in a Delhi settlement, the article shows that patriarchal ideology impresses and controls the nature and outcome of the education they obtain. In the settlement, while most young girls are pursuing higher education, not everyone is expected to channelise their educational degrees to secure paid employment. Unlike men, women are not encouraged to engage in every form of work as the nature of female occupation is tied to notions of honour and disgrace of the family. Locally prevailing patriarchal norms dictate and define what constitutes respectable work for women. They are permitted to aspire and engage in reputable work.

Read the paper here.