Counter-Narratives of Authority in Transition: Marginality in the Indian academy

Exploring what is means to navigate intellectual authority in transition at the borderland of the academy, we invited visual artists and creative storytellers to engage in creative arts research processes to disrupt our ways of thinking – as social scientists -  and to open the project to intergenerational and transdisciplinary play. The source material was the life history narratives of 46 academics were invited to participate in our study. From positions within 30 universities in 10 states in India, each of these academics had contributed to addressing social injustice’s intersections with gender inequalities in their teaching, research or ‘extension activities’ (Third Mission), through various periods from1963-2024.

While a number of the creative outputs are still to be finalised, you are welcome to view A Beautiful Tree (by Brent Meistre), You Are Not Authorised (by Mark Wilby), Tai, Go and Fetch the Newspaper (by Brent Meistre) and two short documentaries about the paintings, ‘Hated Fairytales’ series (by Sudatta Basu Roy Chowdhury) and ‘Dreams and Chaos’ (by Archee Roy).

We have been sharing these processes, and engaging different audiences, within India, including during visits by Dina and Ulrike to our collaborators Nandita and Asha in 2025. For more about the exhibition that has been at the heart of such engagements (in Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad to date), see the materials published open access: Belluigi, D., Dhawan, N. B, Achuthan, A., & Vieten, U. M. (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 will be available open access at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14593329. 

The project also includes a visual sociology component, undertaken by Johny Marjit (Jadavpur University), and piloted a photo-recollection methodology with 7 of the participants, that Dina is developing. So there is more to come!