Talk at Women's Studies Dept., BU
In June, this year, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak at the Women's Studies Department, Bangalore University, thanks to my friend, Sudeshna Mukherjee. Sudeshna has been there for many years now, is a seasoned scholar, and steers the department beautifully.
I spoke about my own research and how I had made some unconventional choices, quite fearlessly, stated what my worries were, and what prices I had paid and so on. I encouraged the students to list these even as they were doing their MA or PhDs. To know what is at stake before taking important decisions about one's work is definitively empowering. It was an interesting afternoon session, with students hailing from LSE to nearby villages. They had interesting questions for me on ideology, interpretation and feminism.
I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Sudeshna--her insights into classroom dynamics, recruitment issues nowadays that plagues the Social Sciences and Humanities, and the surprises teaching Women's Studies offers--were all very poignant. Her future plans for the dept. were to connect the university as research spaces that offered internships involving some real-time data collection for Women's groups. This is absolutely necessary in every field! I can't wait to see her results.
If research and the employment industry are not connected, there is no way of knowing how many jobs are needed and with what expertise. Neither is there any chance of knowing what kind of knowledge is needed. Furthermore, there is no systematization of knowledge and training, unless we connect with respective industries as research labs. This is especially required in the Humanities and Social Sciences, which have been too open-ended at their own peril until now.
We spoke about how many an institution have experienced untimely deaths for the lack of objective criteria in their assessment. No matter how niche an institution is, it has to engage with the State and subject itself to assessments of all kinds, no matter how reductive the assessments themselves may be.
I spoke about my own research and how I had made some unconventional choices, quite fearlessly, stated what my worries were, and what prices I had paid and so on. I encouraged the students to list these even as they were doing their MA or PhDs. To know what is at stake before taking important decisions about one's work is definitively empowering. It was an interesting afternoon session, with students hailing from LSE to nearby villages. They had interesting questions for me on ideology, interpretation and feminism.
I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Sudeshna--her insights into classroom dynamics, recruitment issues nowadays that plagues the Social Sciences and Humanities, and the surprises teaching Women's Studies offers--were all very poignant. Her future plans for the dept. were to connect the university as research spaces that offered internships involving some real-time data collection for Women's groups. This is absolutely necessary in every field! I can't wait to see her results.
If research and the employment industry are not connected, there is no way of knowing how many jobs are needed and with what expertise. Neither is there any chance of knowing what kind of knowledge is needed. Furthermore, there is no systematization of knowledge and training, unless we connect with respective industries as research labs. This is especially required in the Humanities and Social Sciences, which have been too open-ended at their own peril until now.
We spoke about how many an institution have experienced untimely deaths for the lack of objective criteria in their assessment. No matter how niche an institution is, it has to engage with the State and subject itself to assessments of all kinds, no matter how reductive the assessments themselves may be.
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