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The interdisciplinary research project ‘Counter Narratives of Authority in Transition: Marginality in Indian Academia’ investigates the experiences of feminist academics based or having worked at Higher Education Institutions across India.  The research is not only engaging with the individual narratives - by now 46 academics were interviewed - but offering creative interpretations (stories and zines) and visual art (paintings, short films).  Those creative outcomes have been exhibited in different locations in Indian universities, since January 2025, and are published as an open access database [2] and online playlist [3].

The project’s PI at QUB is Mitchell Institute Fellow: Legacy, , in cooperation with (Co-I), and the Indian colleagues are (PI), WSC, Jadavpur University, Kolkata in collaboration with (Co-I.), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Both Drs Dhawan and Achuthan are Visiting Scholars at the Mitchell Institute and Dr Dhawan was granted a Global Fellowship, which enables her to come to Belfast for a research visit mid of May.  She is giving this year’s Athena Swan Lecture on 28 May.

Joining the research project at the end of 2023, I embarked on a 2-week research visit to India on 7 March 2025 (until 21/ 22 March).  Eventually, being able to meet the Indian colleagues in person whom I only met virtually, beforehand.  With a focus on audience reception studies, I planned to be involved in making the project (in progress) more visible and introducing early findings to different audiences, during my stay.  Further, I was invited to give two lectures in Kolkata and deliver a MA class on feminist methodologies at Hyderabad University.

My programme felt packed reminding me that this was a work/research visit and not a tourist trip to a country (continent) I‘ve never been to before.  Clearly, I had very mixed feelings of excitement and anxiety – an unknown world outside Europe, and clearly beyond my comfort zone.  The range of vaccinations I took also illustrating that India is regarded as a high-risk travel place, and that you need to look out for bottled water and avoiding animal bites (‘stray dogs’), for example.  In hindsight I thought, yes, as a European you try to be in control and was irritated, too, about the adversary and colonial construction of India as ‘the Other’ place.

With three holidays (e.g. 2 days of holi holiday – celebrating the arrival of spring and colouring people on the street) there was opportunity, too, for some leisure time so I could discover some of the spaces outside academia and university life.

On 10 March I delivered the 25^th Pritilata Waddedar Memorial Lecture on ‘Complicity, Colonial Continuity and Liberal Gender Discourse’ at Jadavpur University.  Waddedar was a famous Revolutionary remembered for her bravery in the fight for the Independence of India.  Thrown into this opportunity my talk focused on the role of European 21^st century women and liberal feminism, and the way the latter gets exploited in far-right ideologies and rhetoric, while keeping (socio-economic and racial) hierarchies in place; there is no white gendered innocence.

The second talk took place at the same university, a few days later, but to a different audience: I introduced some of the findings of an interdisciplinary and international research project I carried out a few years ago, on Loss, Displacement and Contemporary Dance.  This lecture was largely based on a chapter in my forthcoming monograph (with Routledge, summer 2025) .

Both lectures were very well attended and the audience, predominantly Gender Studies and Sociology students, impressed me with their in-depth knowledge of ethnicity, intersectional debates and the role of art as well as their challenging questions.

In-between the research team, including three Research Assistances, went to another city, Burdwan, where we introduced the research project at a Women’s college.  As it turned out we were part of a larger event, celebrating International Women’s Day.  The space of the college was impressive as the walls presented images or statements documenting international themes, such as Greta Thunberg’s fight for ecological justice.  They also reminded us of the international urgency of the war in Gaza, and that there is another way of looking at the genocide and humanitarian disaster of Palestinians, historically and from international (literature) lenses.

Apart from the joy of the unexpected wonders by travelling to this place, I learned more about the caste system and cultural codes, which I was not that familiar with.  The practice of having servants in Higher Educational places serving water and food (I assumed there were from the lower caste, e. g. Dalits), for example, and the fact that taxis (drivers) were available and rented for a whole day, showed me a different local economy and symbolic boundaries.  Nonetheless, we are speaking about a country-continent with more than , where Hinduism as religion is dominant and framing public spaces and rituals.

Being able to go by car from A to B suited me very well as the temperature of 36 degrees plus, otherwise, would have hindered me to take part in the busy schedule, I suppose.

Another highlight was our research visit to Hyderabad, where we were present at the opening of an exhibition of the project artefacts- creative material at Hyderabad University, further introducing the research project and me delivering a MA class in sociology on ‘Critical Epistemologies and Situated Intersectionality’.  In addition, we facilitated a focus group discussion and learned that the students were very engaged and highly skilled to read the art (incl. the documentaries).

Unfortunately, attendance of faculty (as they say) meaning ‘colleagues’ was not as high as we had wished for.  There is a reluctance, it seemed, for those established in academia to be confronted with the issue of marginalisation, marginalised voices of female academics coming from disadvantaged or discriminated groups, such as being of Dalit background, trans-gender or identifying as queer, for example.

My return journey to Europe, from Mumbai via London to Belfast, was jeopardized as on this Friday, the 21 March, Heathrow was closed and no planes allowed to land.  Being left in limbo when to return (zero communication with British Airways) I decided to organise an alternative flight for the Saturday, 22 March, from Mumbai to Dublin via Istanbul, and then hopping on the air coach to go back home, to Belfast. It was exhausting, but I arrived safe and sound.

Glad to be back in Europe, I am looking forward to further cooperation with our Indian colleagues and Dina Belluigi, of course, and – as productive as it already is – being part of this exciting research project.

 

2. Belluigi, D. Z., Dhawan, N. B, Achuthan, A., & U. M. Vieten (2025). Counter-Narratives of Authority in Transition: Marginality in the Indian academy. Touring exhibition. Showings: 18-21 January at Jadavpur University, Kolkata; 22 January, at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai; 23-24 January, at Pune University. Engagement materials are available open access at:
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3. Two filmic artworks (by Meistre and Wilby) and short filmic documentations of three paintings (by Chowdhury and Roy), are available on the ‘Counter-Narratives’ playlist

 

Dr Ulrike M. Vieten

Dr Vieten is a Mitchell Institute Fellow: Religion, Arts and Peacebuilding and Senior Lecturer of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast.  Her research focuses on de-constructing racialised gendered and classed group boundaries, considering intersectional positionalities and historical situatedness of institutional racisms.  In the past, Dr Vieten carried out comparative research on Europe and Turkey, and with her recent involvement in the Indian research project expands her work on post-colonial societies in a populist age.

 

Visit to Burdwan - Illustrating a collage of summaries, written by students of what different authors (literature) say about Gaza

Visit to Burdwan - Visiting the Women's College

Announcing the exhibition at Hyderabad University

Art work/painting by Sudatta Basu Roy Chowdhury