Faculty Profile

• Ph.D. (Social Sciences). Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, 2010.
• M.A. (Psychology). Bangalore University, 2003.
• B.A. (Psychology). Union Christian College (M.G. University), Kerala, 2001.

I’m broadly interested in research that looks at psychosocial dynamics – the manner in which subjectivity is implicated in social, cultural and political processes/structures. My earlier work straddled sociology and cultural psychology (youth sociology). My current interests focus on the psycho-politics of gender and sexuality (queer and heterosexual), especially through the analytical tools offered by psychoanalysis and discourse analysis.

Identity/ self, love and other intimacies, the everyday, the life-course and politics/activism across structural and everyday realms are abiding interests (for prospective research student). My theoretical anchoring is (currently) in queer theory, feminism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism and social constructionism.

• Commonwealth Split-site Doctoral Fellowship, 2007-2008.
• UGC Junior and Senior Research Doctoral Fellowship, 2004-2010.
• UGC National Eligibility Test for Lecturership, 2003.
• Third Rank Position, MA Psychology, Bangalore University, Karnataka, 2003.
• First Rank Position, BA Psychology, M.G. University, Kerala, 2001.

Peer-reviewed Publications:

• 2019. “From Separation to Dangerous Love”. In Banerjea, N. et al (Eds.). Lesbian Feminism: Essays Oppposing the Global Heteropatriarchy. London: Zed Books.
• 2019. “Critical Education and the Fostering of the Mad, Bad, Maladjusted Subject”. In Oberoi, H. (Ed). A Song Called Teaching: Ebbs and Flows of Experiential and Empathetic Pedagogies. New Delhi: Aakar Books.
• 2017. “Studying Youth Lives in Contemporary Times : A Multi-site, Multi-disciplinary Endeavour”. In Jayaram, N (Ed) Knowing the Social World: Challenges and Responses, New Delhi : Orient Blackswan.
• 2009. “Indian Youth in a Changing Society”. In Chandra, Sharma and Jain (Eds.), Childhood, Child Labour and Youth: Contested Boundaries, New Delhi: Manak Publications.

Text-Book Publications:

• 2012. “Sexuality and Gender”. In “Gender And Society”, New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Open University.

Popular Media Publications:

• “The Fraught Relations Between Care, Self- Care and Sexuality”( Issue in Focus). In Plainspeak: A Digital Magazine on Sexuality in the Global South. http://www.tarshi.net/inplainspeak/issue-in-focus-the-fraught-relations-between-care-self-care-and-sexuality/, February 3, 2017.
• “Reading off a Black Mirror: Shame, Distress, and (Sexual) Privacy Laws” In Plainspeak: A Digital Magazine on Sexuality in the Global South.
• http://www.tarshi.net/inplainspeak/reading-off-a-black-mirror-shame-distress-and-sexual-privacy-laws/, September 16, 2019.

• Karollil, M. 2020. “Queer Heterosexual, Heterosexual Queer: Two Tales of Queer Love, A 100 Years Apart”, In Plainspeak: A Digital Magazine on Sexuality in the Global South, December 1, 2020.
  https://www.tarshi.net/inplainspeak/queer-heterosexual-heterosexual-queer-two-tales-of-queer-love-100-years-apart/

Book Reviews:

• 2010. Review of “Indian Youth in a Transforming World”, By Peter. R. DeSouza, Sanjay Kumar and Sandeep Shastri (Eds.). Sociological Bulletin, 59 (2).
• 2008. Review of “Culture in Minds and Societies: Foundations of Cultural Psychology”, by Jaan Valsiner . Sociological Bulletin, 57(3).

Conferences/ Seminars/Workshops:

• 2021 “What the Ghost Wants: A Story of Inter-generational Secret-keeping, Reckoning and Redemption in C. Ayyappan’s ‘Spectral Speech’”at Psychosocial Bodies, a conference of the Association of Psychosocial Bodies (organized online by Essex University, UK), 9th July 2021

• 2021 “Monstrous Femininity and Unconscious Male Ambivalence: An Examination of the Yakshi Lores” at Power, (In) Equality and Cultures of Resistance: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Humanities and Social Sciences, organized by Sharda University, Uttar Pradesh, 28-29th March, 2021 (Online)

• 2020 Invited lecture on “Grounded Theory” organized by the School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences for a Research Methodology course, October 6th 2020. (Online)

• 2020. Moderator at the talk “India Queer”, by Prof. Shivaji Panikker, organized by Ekalokam Trust for Photography, 23rd September 2020 (Online)

• 2020. “Power, Love/Desire and Gender: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Reading of Rituparno Ghosh's Chitrangada and Tagore's Chitra” at Preaching to the Choir 2020: An International LGBTQ+ Psychology & Related Social Sciences Conference, SOGII ( of Canadian Psychological Association), 15th-20th July 2020. (Online)

• 2020. “Digital (Sexual) Violence Against Women: A Psycho-Feminist Response”. Paper presented in the Violence and Constitutional Values panel of the IAWS XVI National Conference on Women’s Studies, National Law University, Delhi. 28th - 31st January, 2020.

• 2018.“The Yakshi as the Monstrous Feminine: Some Malayalam Representations.”, At Evil Women: Women and Evil, An Inclusive Interdisciplinary Conference, Vienna, Austria, 1-3rd December, 2018.
• 2018. Invited resource person on "Post-Positivist Epistemologies: Constructivism", at the ICSSR national workshop for MPhil and PhD scholars titled “Qualitative Research and Ethnography” at Ambedkar University Delhi, 22nd February,2018.
• 2017.Invited resource person for the project titled "An Exploratory Study of Discriminations Based on Non-normative Genders and Sexualities", at The Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, TISS, Mumbai. 14th-16th April 2017.
• 2017.Invited panelist, presented “The Psycho-politics of Suicide”, following the screening of the film Placebo (in the context of alienation and suicide in higher education) as a part of AUDFA Seminar Series, Ambedkar University Delhi, 7th April 2017.
• 2017. Invited respondent to papers on panel on gender and psychoanalysis, presented “Gender in Psycho-Social-Relational Perspective” in the Fifth International Psychoanalytic Conference, “Psychoanalytic Exploration of Darkness in Culture and Clinic”, New Delhi, 12-14 January.
• 2014. “Love Stories from India and the United Kingdom: Choice and the Transformation of Love”, At the Fourth Global Conference on Gender and Love at Oxford University, United Kingdom, by Interdisciplinary.net, 24th-26th September, 2014.
• 2013. Discussant for the paper “Developing grounded theory using Atlas TI: Analysis of qualitative data on entrepreneurs” by Anirban Sengupta, at Knowing the Social World: Challenges and Responses, a conference organized at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, 13th-15th March 2013.
• 2013. “Work and Love in Youth Narratives: A Global North-South Dialogue”, presented at the Youth Research Center, Melbourne University, Melbourne, 20th June 2013.
• 2013. “Studying Youth Across ‘Tradition’ and ‘Moderntiy’ : A Multi-site, Multi-disciplinary Endeavour” at the Seminar on ‘Knowing the Social World: Challenges and Responses’ held at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 13th-15th March, 2013.
• 2012. “Love in the Times of Choice: A Critique”. Presented at the 40st World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, New Delhi, India, 16th-19th February, 2012.
• 2011. “The Slave/ Submissive and the Master Within Them: Autonomy, Consent and the Feminist Discourse”. Presented at the 13th National Conference of the Indian Association of Womens Studies , Wardha, India, 21st-24th January, 2011.
• 2011. Resource person, lecture on “Philosophy of Social Science Research” the national level Social Science Research Methods Festival for Ph.D scholars at Ambedkar University Delhi, Dec 11-31st, 2011.
• 2010. “The Social Construction of ‘Love’ & ‘Work’ Amongst Youth Across India and the United Kingdom”, at Faculty Seminar Series, AUD, August 20th 2010.
• 2008.“A qualitative study of youth values in India and the U.K.: A Critique of Individualism/Collectivism”. Presented at the 19th International Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP), Bremen, Germany.
• 2008 - “A Qualitative Study of Youth Values in the India and the U.K.: Exploring ‘Choice’ and Well-Being” Presented at the 1st International Congress of Social Sciences (ICSS), organized by Social Sciences Research Society (SoSReS), Izmir, Turkey.

Courses Taught at AUD:

• Understanding Personality (School of Undergraduate Studies)
• Experiments in Psychology (School of Undergraduate Studies)
• Qualitative Research Methods (MA Psychology)
• Psychology as a Human Science (MA Psychology)
• Gender and Psychology (MA Psychology)
• Gender, Body and Subjectivity (MPhil Psychology)