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PhD projects

<a href="https://www.monash.edu/arts/graduate_research" onclick="target='_blank';">https://www.monash.edu/arts/graduate_research</a>

1996 …2023

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Biography

Trained in a classical English literary canon at Delhi University, India, my research interests, and areas in which I am happy to supervise, include postcolonial literatures, literatures of the Indian subcontinent in English and in translation, diasporic subcontinental literatures from Africa, Australia, Canada and the USA, translation theory and practice, studies in nationalism, feminisms and diasporas, public intellectuals, identity politics, queer theory, culinary cultures, global Englishes and Bombay cinema.

Most recently, my work has been in public diplomacy between Australia and India. I have facilitated deep-impact literary and cultural exchanges between Australia and India through Literary Commons! (2014-15), a tri-nation Autumn School in Literary Translation (Kolkata 2013) and ALIF: Australia India Literatures International Forum (Sydney 2012). ALIF was nominated for an Australian Arts in Asia Award by the Honourable Tony Burke, Minister of the Arts and Immigration in 2013. A special issue based on Indigenous Australian and Dalit Indian work was published in Cordite Poetry Review in 2016. 

My edited collection of essays, Being Bengali: at home and in the world (Routledge 2014), is an enquiry into the socio-intellectual history of this eclectic linguistic group from Eastern India and Bangladesh. I have also co-edited A Treasury of Bangla Stories (Srishti 1999) and my translations have appeared widely. In 1996, I received an AK Ramanujan Award for the most felicitous translations from two Indian languages, Bangla and Hindi, into English.

I am the national Convenor of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN). I currently serve on the Steering Committee for the Migration, Identity, and Translation Network – a multi-disciplinary network of researchers from across a range of faculties from Monash University and the University of Warwick via the Monash-Warwick Alliance. I am also leading a project on Literary Habitats that looks at how literature is produced in Melborune, a UNESCO City of Literature, as well as My Place My Story, a community engagement program with Clayton, where Monash University is located.

I completed my doctoral work on “Hotfooting Around Essentialism: Feminisms of Colour” at the University of Alberta, Canada. As a graduate student, I was invited to curate an exhibition on Alberta Women Making History and produced a catalogue for it, The Blue Sky Their Horizon, as also a digital, oral narrative history of academic women at the University of Alberta as part of a special project on Institutionalising Feminism. I was actively involved in public engagement in Edmonton as a Board Member of the Global Visions Film Festival.

Moving across three continents, from India to Canada and now to Australia, has impressed upon me the critical importance of place and context in any theoretical or definitional categorisation. I have been invited to comment on these issues on ABC Radio National’s Books and Arts Daily and Big Ideas programs.

 

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 5 - Gender Equality
  • SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
  • SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

External positions

National Convenor, Asian Australian Studies Research Network

1 Feb 2018 → …

Committee Member, South Asian Studies Association of Australia

1 Jan 20161 Jan 2018

Steering Committee Member, Migration, Identity and Translation Network

1 Jun 2015 → …

Management Committee Member, Asia Pacific Writers and Translators Inc.

1 Jan 20151 Jan 2017

Founding Member, Southern Crossings: Reimagining Australia, South Asian and the world

1 Jan 2015 → …

Visiting Expert in Diaspora Studies, University of Fiji

Oct 2014Nov 2014

Peer Register, Australia Council for the Arts

1 Jan 20141 Jan 2017

Honorary Research Fellow, Australia India Institute

1 Jan 2014 → …

Research area keywords

  • Postcolonial literatures, literatures of the Indian subcontinent in English and in translation, diasporic subcontinental literatures from Africa, Australia, Canada and the USA, translation theory and practice, studies in nationalism, feminisms and diasporas, public intellectuals, identity politics, queer theory, culinary cultures, global Englishes and Bombay cinema.

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

Recent external collaboration on country/territory level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots or