| 9.00 - 9.30 | Zoom Set Up – check of audio/ video connections. |
9.30 – 9.55 | Conference Welcome and Introduction of AHRC Minorities on Campus: Sariya Cheruvallil – Contractor), Ashok Kumar Mocherla and Alison Halford |
| Session 1 10.00- 11.00 | Prof Matthew Guest (Durham University): 'Religion, Knowledge and Identity in UK Universities: Reflections on Research, 2009-2020' Rapporteurs: Professor Nishi Mitra (TISS, Mumbai); Dr Opinderjit Takhar (Wolverhampton University) Q and A session |
| Session 2 11.00 – 12.00 | Dr Amitha Santiago (Bangalore University) 'Higher Education, the National Education Policy and Institutionalising the Governance of Minorities, Women and Dalits' Prof N. Sukumar (Delhi University) and Dr Shailaja Menon (Ambedkar University): 'Speaking Themselves into Existence: Experiences of Dalit Christian Women in Indian Academia' Dr Ashraf Kunnummal (University of Johannesburg): 'New Politics in India: Four Key Concepts' |
| 12.00 – 12.10 | Break |
| Session 3 12.15 – 1.15 | Dr Ranu Jain (TISS, Mumbai) 'Intellectual Paradigms and Structural Constraints: A Look at the Exclusion of Minorities in Indian Higher Education' Dr Mujibur Rehman (Jamia Millia Islamia) 'Making sense of Intellectual Paradigms on "Minority Rights" and "the study of religion" in Indian Universities: Comparative analysis of Jamia Millia Islamia(JMI) and Jawaharlal Nehru University( JNU)' Dr Ramesh Babu Para ‘Sociological Construction of Higher Education for Marginalised Sections: From Colonial Modernity to New Education Policy 2020' |
| 1.15 – 1.30 | Rapporteurs Closing Comments: Prof Nisha Mitra and Dr Opinderjit Takhar Concluding remarks and thanks: Sariya Cheruvallil – Contractor and Ashok Kumar Mocherla |
Biographies
Professor Mathew Guest is Professor in the Sociology of Religion in the Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, UK. He has researched religion within university contexts for over a decade and is co-author of Christianity and the University Experience: Understanding Student Faith (Bloomsbury 2013) and Islam on Campus: Contested Identities and the Cultures of Higher Education in Britain (OUP, 2020)
Dr Opinderjit Kaur Takhar (MBE) is an internationally recognised researcher within Sikh Studies and Director of the Centre for Sikh and Panjabi Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. Her work on Punjabi Dalits and identity formation has been published in a number of books. Takhar’s research is ongoing in terms of caste issues and gender dynamics amongst Punjabis, and Sikhs specifically.
Professor Nishi Mitra vom Berg is Professor at the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, School of Development Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. Currently, she is leading a UNDP Project for strengthening a Gender and Women’s Studies Program at Kabul University, Afghanistan and has a Linneaus Palme Award from Sweden for working on themes of Gender and Human Rights with Lund University.
Dr Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor is an Assistant Professor at the Centre of Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University. Recently, Sariya has worked on an ESRC funded project on ‘Re/presenting Islam on campus: gender, radicalisation and interreligious understanding in British higher education’ and ‘Tackling religion-based hate crime on the multi-faith campus’. She is Principal Investigator on the AHRC GCRF Research Network – Minorities on Campus: Discrimination, equality and politics of nationalism in Indian HE
Dr Ashok Kumar Mocherla is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Indore, India. His academic interests include sociology of religion, caste, faith healing, and missionary medicine. Ashok has recently published ‘Dalit Christians in South India: Caste, Ideology and Lived Religion’ (Routledge, 2020). He is a co-investigator on the AHRC GCRF Research Network – Minorities on Campus: Discrimination, equality and politics of nationalism in Indian HE
Dr Alison Halford is a Research Fellow at Coventry University, UK. As a feminist sociologist of religion, Alison has a special interest in gender and minority religions. She is a researcher on the AHRC GCRF Research Network – Minorities on Campus: Discrimination, equality and politics of nationalism in Indian HE
Dr Amitha Santiago teaches at the Bishop Cotton Women’s Christian College, Bangalore University. From 2017 -2019, she was an Asian Senior Research Fellow (Post-Doctoral) at the University of Hong Kong University. Dr Santiago has recently completed a two-year study on ‘Nurturing the Abstract in the Face of Religious Fundamentalism: A Study of Sufi Dharghas in Karnataka’.
Prof N. Sukumar has been teaching Political Science at Delhi University for 19 years. He is a former fellow at Developing Countries Research Centre, University of Delhi. He also taught at Ambedkar Chair of Social Work at the National Institute of Social Work and Social Sciences, Bhubaneswar and Ambedkar Chair, Tezpur Central University, Assam. In 2014 -2016 he was involved in a major Research project, sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi, ‘Contested Spaces: Exclusion and Discrimination in Higher Educational Institutions in India’.
Dr Shailaja Menon teaches History at the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi.
Dr Ashraf Kunnummal is a research associate at the University of Johannesburg. His doctoral thesis was ‘A Critical Decolonial Reading of Liberation in Islamic Liberation Theology: The Works of As ghar Ali Engineer, Shabir Akhtar, Farid Esack and Hamid Dabashi’. He is currently revising his thesis into a book and aims to work towards a theory and praxis of decolonial Islamic liberation theology. Ashraf Kunnummal has also edited an anthology of writings from universities and colleges across Kerala in south India.
Dr Ranu Jain is Professor at the Centre for Studies in Sociology of Education, School of Social Science, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She has published numerous papers on subjects related to ethnicity, communalism, minority, Muslim and education. She, along with colleagues from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, has worked on an action project, ‘Towards Communal Harmony’. This project involved intervention in slums of Ghatkopar, Mumbai, especially Azad Nagar, Chirag Nagar and Parsiwadi.
Dr Mujibur Rehman teaches at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. The new edition of his volume, Communalism in postcolonial India: Changing Contours was republished in 2018. Dr Rehman is editor of the Rise of Saffron Power (Routledge 2018) and is currently completing a book on the Political Future of Indian Muslims, which is to be published by Simon and Schuster.
Dr Ramesh Babu Para is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Dr Ambedkar International Centre, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India, 15-Janpath, New Delhi.