Cultural studies views culture through meanings and values gleaned from everyday lived processes, rather than seeing it as that which is linked to the past through monuments, scriptures, arts etc. It broadly engages with cultural institutions and productions in a social and political context. Its interdisciplinary linkage to English departments is made evident in its deployment of literary and critical theory to the study of cultural phenomena. At the moment, our research in this area is focused on various popular cultural formations, including literature, film, advertising, sport and internet cultures. We will look to expand within as well as beyond these topics in the future.
Members: Dr Sonal Jha, Dr Anubhav Pradhan, and Dr Sruthi Vinayan

While a new and burgeoning area of research, sports studies has largely remained aligned to the disciplines of history and sociology in India. The presence of sport in Indian social life and popular culture cannot be understated. From local parks to film and television, sport is ubiquitous. It stands to reason that Indian cultural studies should take note of this neglected area of study. In line with this, we deploy the lens of cultural studies to examine sport with respect to representation, commodification, the sports-media complex, celebrity, fandom, and literature, in an attempt to add to the cultural history of sport in India.
Members: Dr. Sonal Jha

When the positive psychology lens is applied to the organizational domain, it gives rise to positive organizational behaviour. This field tries to enhance organizational performance and employee well-being. This is achieved through the scientific study of positively valued subjective experiences, personal traits and civic virtues in the workplace by harnessing their potential to improve the work related well-being. Cross-cultural work experiences also form part of these investigations.
Members: Dr. Anindita Ghosh

Positive psychology studies human strengths with the ultimate aim of increasing well-being. This is opposed to the previously dominant paradigm of healing and repairing symptoms of disorders that focussed more on human deficits. Within this field, research is conducted on the topics of positive psychology interventions, character strengths of gratitude and humour, well-being, flow, positive health and mental health. Helping people achieve better health and overall well-being is the prime motive.
Members: Dr. Anindita Ghosh

The pace and scale of urbanization in our times has necessitated critical reflections and course corrections in a wide range of domains. Planning, housing, governance, infrastructure, waste management, livelihood, heritage, these are only some of the key thematics which are attracting contextual, evidence-based, intersectional research on our cities. In India as well as the Global South at large, cities present very tangible opportunities for careful policy interventions and dialogues by scholars in contributing to and transforming the paradigms of our ongoing urbanisation. Focussing primarily but not exclusively on urban planning, history, heritage, and writing, we are looking to build a corpus of scholarship located in and speaking to shared issues and perspectives of the Global South.
Members: Dr Anubhav Pradhan

The long nineteenth century has been researched and spoken about extensively, but the recent material turn in Victorian scholarship has opened exciting new avenues for further research. What was the footprint of British colonial and imperial rule on Indian life? How did interaction with South Asia and its denizens contribute to the formation of British selfhood? Was metropolitan life constituted, vitally, by the inevitable depth and reach of colonised cultures? How were these processes and encounters written about and portrayed in literature and art of the time? These are some of the questions which we are interested in examining, to generate more layered understandings of colonialism and its wide-ranging, mutually constitutive impact on metropolitan and subcontinental life and culture.
Members: Dr Anubhav Pradhan