I. Published Writing/ Papers Presented/Conferences Attended

Published an article (collaborative) titled “Unnata Shikshana: Uddesha Upayogagala Naduvina Gondala Higher Education Policy: Mistaking Goals and Functions?” in a Kannada journal Deshakaala, Issue 25, April-June, 2011.

Presented a paper titled “On the Very Idea of Liberal Education: The Case of India” at the Global Conclave of Young Scholars of Indian Education, National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), New Delhi, held from 27 – 29 January, 2011.

Participated in an international Seminar, “Dharma and Ethics V: Decolonizing the Social Sciences”, Organized by the Centre for the Study of Local Cultures, Kuvempu University, Shivmogga and the Vivekananda Institute of Indian Studies, Mysore, 22-23 January, 2011.

II. Thesis: Title: Locations of Knowledge: The University, Liberal Education and the Case of India

Abstract (Same as given in annual report 2009-10)

The research project investigates the contemporary discourses around the “crisis” in higher education in India, particularly in the institution of the university (considered as the very embodiment of the idea of liberal education) in the last two decades. While the frames used to evaluate the crisis are varied and sometimes mutually inconsistent, it is striking that even the scholars who approach the idea of the crisis more skeptically and attempt to nuance the “crisis” thesis in numerous ways, seem to converge around the point that there is a grain of truth in the perception and that nothing can be gained by wishing away the perception by attributing its presence to the interests of one group or the other. Any attempt to understand this perception of crisis and to provide this articulation with a thicker content, I argue, requires a revisiting of at least three moments in history when “higher” education, learning, knowledge and the institutional structures required to create and transmit knowledge were debated with great intensity – the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century when the idea of the modern university and education is debated in Europe and in India, the early twentieth century in India when the problem/question of education and knowledge is contextualized and historicized by the nationalists and the irruption of the problem of education and knowledge in the last two decades, culminating in the discourse around the knowledge society with its focus on various forms of knowledge and the ambiguous role of the university in the new scheme of things.