Debadrita Chakraborty

Debadrita Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor in the Literature department and is currently leading the Gender Cluster at the School of Liberal Studies. Her primary research lies at the intersections of Gender and South Asian Literary and Cultural Studies. She is a Charles Wallace Fellow and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AHEA), United Kingdom. Debadrita completed her BA (Hons) and MA (distinction) in English Literature from the University of Calcutta, India and Macquarie University, Australia, respectively. Her doctoral research examines literary and cultural representations of the shifting nature of South Asian masculine identities catalysed by major political and socio-cultural events from the 1970s onwards in Britain.

Currently, she is working on a two-part volume to be published by Palgrave Macmillan UK, a special issue on 75 years of partition to be published by Taylor and Francis and a monograph by a university press. As a convenor of the Gender Cluster, she is currently working towards engaging students in gender research, community outreach activities and a podcast series on breaking gender norms.

Debadrita is associated with UPES as a founding faculty at the School of Liberal Studies. She has actively participated in designing the curriculum offered to various schools in UPES and the School of Liberal Studies. She has actively participated in school webinars designed for potential students and has been training students to perform research on gender in the gender cluster.

Before UPES, she worked for five years as a postgraduate tutor at Cardiff University. Courses taught include Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama and poetry, postcolonial and Caribbean literature, literary theory and criticism and Romantic and Victorian literature. She has also worked as a senior journalist, publicist and copywriter preceding her doctoral study. 

Debadrita’s primary research lies at the intersections of Gender and South Asian Literary and Cultural Studies. Her research areas and interests include gender and masculinity studies, ecocritical studies, diaspora literature and culture, folklore, memory and partition studies, graphic narratives and manga and digital humanities.  She is currently working on two research projects on digitally mapping folktales and folklores of Uttarakhand and ecofeminist practices in India and the Himalayan region.

Debadrita’s aim whilst facilitating learning among both small (seminars) and large (lectures) groups has been to ensure that students are fluent in the subject discourse and have confidence in expressing their critical arguments both verbally and in writing. Through her course curricula, she aims to facilitate intellectual, communication and interpersonal skills among students to meet the challenges of both the academic and corporate world. The courses offered in Literature and Communicationmat the School of Liberal Studies aim to enhance students’ problem-solving abilities; ability to analyse multidisciplinary subjects; use of appropriate research methodologies; develop logical arguments; authoring effective reports, essays, and dissertations; and develop organizing skills through conference and workshop organisation.

Debadrita is currently offering courses in Literature in the School of Liberal Studies. Courses offered include - Classical Literature, Gender and Genre, Drama: Page and Performance, Ecocriticism and ecological futures, Comic Studies, Digital Literature and, Diaspora, Culture, and, Migration. She has offered courses on Gender, Culture and Society and Living Conversations to various schools at UPES.

Debadrita is a Charles Wallace fellow and has received several prestigious grants during her doctoral study in the United Kingdom. These include Sidney Perry Foundation Education Grant (2020 & 2021), Gilchrist Educational Trust Grant (2019 & 2021), Funds for Women Graduates (FFWG) Foundation Grant (2017 & 2018), Cardiff University Postgraduate Bursary (2015-2016). She has also received conference grants and scholarships for the British Association for South Asian Studies conference (2016) and recently from the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, University of Victoria in 2022 and 2023.

Debadrita has read papers at more than 15 international and national conferences including the British Association of South Asian Studies (BASAS), European Association of South Asian Studies, Swedish Association of South Asian Studies, University of St. Andrews, University of Cambridge, University College Dublin, Lund University and University of Galway and more recently at IIT Madras and Jamia Millia Islamia University. Debadrita has been invited to deliver talks by the University of Lapland and the Royal University of Bhutan. She has published over 14 articles and essays in the fields of South Asian culture, politics and literature, graphic fiction, gender studies and diaspora studies in reputed journals including Gender, Work and Organization and Wasafiri, Journal of International Women’s Studies, NORMA, and books titled Graphic Novels as World Literature and Living Theories and True Ideas in the 21st Century Reflections on Marxism and Decolonization. Currently, she is working on a two-part volume to be published by Palgrave UK, a special issue on 75 years of partition to be published by Taylor and Francis and a monograph by a university press. Debadrita regularly publishes and has written opinion pieces for noteworthy webzines and online university publishing houses including Political Quarterly, Transforming Society and American Studies Journal to name a few.

debadrita@ddn.upes.ac.in