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Mailing Address :    Institute of Development Studies Kolkata
                               Calcutta University Alipore Campus, 5th floor
                               1, Reformatory Street
                               Kolkata - 700027, India

Tel  :                      +91 (33) 2448 8178     

Fax :                      +91 (33) 2448 1364 

E-mail:                   barnita at idsk dot org; barnita at gmail dot com

Dr. Bagchi received her Ph.D. from Trinity College and the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, in 2001. She obtained a B. A. in English Jadavpur University (placed first in the first class) and a 2nd B. A. and M. A. from St. Hilda's College, Oxford (securing a First Class).

After doing a Ph.D at the intersection of education, gender studies, and English Literature, Barnita Bagchi worked as a post-doctoral member of faculty at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai (2002-2004). She joined IDSK in May 2004.

She has held fellowships at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, and the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. She has been a speaker at international seminars and conferences, held in universities such as Durham, Winchester, Cambridge, Heidelberg, Paris, and Lausanne.

She works at the intersection of gender, education, narrative, social capital, and human development. She is currently preparing a volume (with critical introduction) of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's essays, writing articles on feminist utopias and human development, and doing conceptual and field-based work on gendered social capital in the field of education. In February 2008, she co-organized an international conference, held at Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, on Utopias, Dystopias, and Concepts of Development.

She is a co-opted Executive Committee Member of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education from July 2008 to 2011.

She has taught and teaches courses (in the IDSK-Calcutta University M.Phil. in Development Studies and in other institutions such as IGIDR and Jadavpur University) focusing on gender, education, narrative, women’s writing, social capital, and human development.

Gender Studies, Education, English Literature, Comparative Literature, Social Capital.

Selected Publications :

(Co-edited with Amiya Kumar Bagchi and Dipankar Sinha) Webs of History: Information, Communication, and Technology from Early to Post-Colonial India , New Delhi, Manohar, 2005.

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain : Sultana's Dream and Padmarag, Penguin, 2005.

Pliable Pupils and Sufficient Self-Directors: Narratives of Female Education by Five British Women Writers, 1778-1814 , New Delhi, Tulika, 2004.

'Hannah Arendt, Education and Liberation: A Comparative South Asian Feminist Perspective', in Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics, No.35, ISSN:1617-5069; online at http://www.archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/voltextserver/voltexte/2008/8000/pdf/HPSACP_Bagchi_No._35.pdf

'Bengali Folklore and Children's Literature', in Indian Folklife, No 21, April 2006.

"Instruction a Torment"? Jane Austen's Early Writing and Conflicting Versions of Female Education in Romantic-Era "Conservative" British Women's Novels', in Romanticism on the Net, No. 40, November 2005.

'Engendering ICT and Social Capital', in Mainstreaming ICTs ( One World South Asia, http://www.digitalopportunity.org/ ) , Vol. II No.3, May - June 2005.

'Girls' Education in Murshidabad: Tales from the Field' (longer version of article with same title which appeared in Grassroots, April 2003), in Women's Education and Politics of Gender, ed. Uttara Chakraborty and Banimanjari Das (Kolkata: Bethune College, 2005).

"So Odd and So Stupid": The Triumph of Fanny Price', in Penguin Study Edition of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, ed. Shobhana Bhattacharji (New Delhi: Penguin, 2005) .

'Gender, History and the Recovery of Knowledge through Information and Communication Technology', in Webs of History: Information, Communication, and Technology from Early to Post-Colonial India, ed. Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Dipankar Sinha, and Barnita Bagchi (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004).

Review of The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India, ed. Brinda Bose and Subhabrata Bhattacharyya, Seagull Books, 2007, in The Statesman, 8th Day, 26 August 2007.

Review Article, on Urvashi Butalia ed. Inner Line: The Zubaan Anthology of Stories by Indian Women, New Delhi: Zubaan, Radha Chakravarty ed. Bodymaps: Stories by South Asian Women, New Delhi: Zubaan, Saumitra Chakravarty ed. Three Sides of Life: Short Stories by Bengali Women Writers, Delhi: Oxford University Press, Wasbir Hussain, Homemakers Without The Men: Assam's Widows of Violence, New Delhi: Indialog, Suzanne Ironbiter, Devi: Mother of My Mind, Ahmedabad: MapinLit, Badri Narayan. Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and Politics, New Delhi, Sage, Vandana R. Singh ed. and trans. To Each Her Own: An Anthology of Contemporary Hindi Short Stories, Delhi: National Book Trust, in The Book Review, August 2007.

Review of Organizing Empire: Individualism, Collective Agency, and India by Purnima Bose, Duke University Press, in Esocialsciences, www.esocialsciences.com, August 2007.

Review of Women, Development, and the UN: A Sixty-Year Quest for Equality and Justice by Devaki Jain, Orient Longman, 2006, in The Statesman, 8th Day, 17 June 2007.

Review of Meera Kosambi, Crossing Thresholds: Feminist Essays in Social History, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007, in The Book Review, June 2007.

Review of The Indians: Portrait of a People by Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar, New Delhi: Viking, 2007, in The Statesman, 8th Day, 13 May 2007.

Review of Engendering Human Security: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Thanh-Dam Truong, Saskia Wieringa, and Amrita Chhachhi, New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2007, in The Statesman, 8th Day, 23 April 2007.

Review of Prem Chowdhry, Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples: Gender, Caste, and Patriarchy in Northern India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007, in The Statesman, 8th Day, 25 March 2007.

Review of Janani: Mothers, Daughters, Motherhood, edited by Rinki Bhattacharya. New Delhi: Sage, 2006, in The Book Review, March 2007.

Review of Veena Das, Last Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. In The Statesman, 8th Day, 11 February 2007.

Review of Rhetoric and Reality: Gender and the Colonial Experience in South Asia, edited by Avril Powell and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Oxford University Press, 2006, in The Statesman, 8th Day, 8 October 2006.

Review of Capabilities, Freedom, and Equality: Amartya Sen's Work from a Gender Perspective edited by Bina Agarwal, Jane Humphries, and Ingrid Robeyns, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006, in The Statesman, 8th Day, 24 September 2006.

Review of The Women, Gender and Development Reader edited by Nalini Visvanathan, Lynn Duggan, Laurie Nisonoff and Nan Wiegersma, and Feminist Futures: Re-imagining Women, Culture and Development edited by Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran and Priya Kurian; both published by New Delhi: Zubaan 2006, in Himal South Asian, September 2006; online at
http://www.himalmag.com/2006/september/review_2.htm

Review of Mythili Sivaraman, Fragments of a Life, New Delhi: Zubaan, 2006, in The Book Review, June 2006.

Review of Rinki Bhattacharya ed., Behind Closed Doors: Domestic Violence in India, Sage: 2004, in Indian Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 13 no.1, 2006.

Review of Caroline Ramazanoglu and Janet Holland, Feminist Methodology: Challenges and Choices, Indian Journal of Gender Studies Vol. 12, No.2-3, 2005.

Review of Malavika Karlekar's Re-Visioning the Past: Early Photography in Bengal 1875-1915 , Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2005; Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 40 no. 40, 1 October 2005.

Review of Mahasweta Devi's The Armenian Champa Tree, Our Non-Veg Cow and Other Stories, Narayan Gangopadhyay's 4 Heroes and a Green Beard, and Syed Mustafa Siraj's The Colonel Investigates, The Book Review, Children's Literature Number, November 2004.

Translation of Santosh Kumar Ghosh, ‘Hoina’ (‘Not Possible’), in The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India, ed. J. Bagchi and S. Das Gupta (Kolkata: Stree Books, 2003)

Translation of Rokeya S Hossain, ‘The Worship of Woman’, in Talking of Power, ed. Malini Bhattacharya and Abhijit Sen  (Kolkata, Stree, 2003)

Translations of ‘The Ascetic’ and ‘A Yajna to Bring Forth Sons’, in Jyotirmoyee Devi, The Impermanence of Lies, introduction by Mahasweta Devi (Kolkata: Stree Books, 1998)

‘Two Lives,’ at South Asia Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, 28 July, 2008.

‘Paradigms of Female Schooling and Critiques of Gender-based Educational Inequality in Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Writing’, at International Standing Conference for the History of Education, Rutgers University, Newark, USA, 23-27 July 2008.

‘The Female Community in Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Padmarag (The Ruby), at international conference ‘Queer People 4: The Whole History of Sexuality,’ Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, UK, 11 July 2008.

‘Hannah Arendt, Education, and Liberation: A Comparative South Asian Perspective.’ Seminar at Methoden Colloquium, Department of Political Science, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, 4 December 2007.

‘Analysing Female Utopias and Narratives of Female Education,’ seminar at Reid Hall (Columbia University), Paris, 12 November 2007.

‘Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Women’s Education in Bengal,’ lecture at Research Colloquium, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Berlin, 25 October, 2007.

‘The History of Women’s Education in South Asia: Voices, Resources, and Agency,’ Keynote Lecture at the 16th Annual Conference of the Women’s History Network, ‘Collecting Women’s Lives,’ Winchester University, 9 September 2007.

‘Towards Ladyland: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and the Movement for Women’s Education in Colonial Bengal, c.1900-1932,’ invited paper presented at international colloquium, ‘Empire Overseas, Empire at Home: Social Change in the History of Education,’ Hamburg University, 24-25 July 2007.

‘The History of Women’s Education in Colonial India: Networks and Agency,’ at the Department of Political Science Tuesday Colloqium, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, 17 July, 2007.

‘L’Education, l’Action, et la Désobéissance Civile: Trois Écrivaines Indiennes en Dialogue avec Hannah Arendt’ (‘Education, Action, and Civil Disobedience: Three Indian Women of the Colonial Period, Viewed in the Context of Hannah Arendt’) invited paper, presented at international colloquium on ‘Pouvoir, Pensée, Jugement Politique: Travailler sur et avec l’œuvre de Hannah Arendt’, (‘Power, War, and Judgment: Working on and with the Work of Hannah Arendt’), at the University of Lausanne, 10-12 May 2007.

‘Gendering and Ungendering the Self: Leela Majumder’s Autobiographical Narratives’, at Conference on ‘Women’s Narratives, Women’s Histories’, School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, 29 March 2007.

‘Friends, Lovers, and Chocolate: Querying and Queering the Comforts of Popular Fiction’, at conference on ‘Western Popular Literature and Its Reception in India’, Department of English, Jadavpur University, 19 December 2006.

‘Ramabai, Rokeya, and the History of Gendered Social Capital in India’, at the Women’s History Network Anuual Conference ‘Thinking Women: Education, Culture and Society’, 1 - 3 September, 2006, University of Durham, UK.

‘Resourceful Women? Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Gendered Social Capital’,  at conference on ‘Narratives of Development’, IDSK, Kolkata, 28 March 2006.

‘Education, Women’s Narratives, and Feminist Civil Society Activism: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Feminist Utopias’, at the conference ‘Feminist Utopias and Urban Social Experimentations’, University of Tours, France, 8- 9  March 2006.

‘Education, Female Utopias, and Civil Society: Some 18th-Century British Women’s Narratives from the Perspective of Development Studies’, at conference on ‘Education and Culture in the Long 18th Century’, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, 8 September 2005.