Hia Sen
Assistant Professor
About-
I work primarily in the fields of Sociology and History of childhood, transcultural connections, associations and also the field of cultural production. I am currently working on areas which involve studying children in two different periods and the various cultural productions of and around the young. I am particularly interested in how children in the past and the present encounter "others" and how such connections might produce young people's ideas about their world.
I am at present working on a minor research project funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research on the participation of children in All India Radio children's programmes and in some print enterprises since Independence. In yet another project I have been working on Indian children's encounters and connections which emerged from their association with missionary societies in early twentieth century India. In 2017 I completed another ICSSR funded project in which I explored how actors, perform age roles on stage.
My work attempts to show how studying children might contribute to larger sociological conversations - about nation, internationalism, creative fields etc. In the last few years I have been publishing and speaking at various platforms with this objective.
I teach an undergraduate course on Qualitative Research Methods, Family and Kinship, and Frankfurt School Thinkers and postgraduate courses on Sociology of Childhood, Kinship, Globalisation and Indian Society. I am also interested in research on imagined geographies, and on social inequalities.
Qualifications+
BA Sociology (Presidency College, 2005)
MA Sociology (Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2007)
M.Phil Sociology (Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2009)
PhD. Sociology (Albert-Ludwigs Universität, Freiburg, 2012)
Biography+
I am currently working on an ICSSR funded project on children's participation in media enterprises from 1947 to the 1960s.
I am also exploring the various accounts produced of children in South Asia in nineteenth century missionary and travel writing to explore how transracial encounters can be read through the lens of age.
My doctoral work at the Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg was on exploring a middle class culture of childhood in West Bengal through narratives by children themselves and on extending the concept of childhood as a Bildungsmoratorium which had limited use in the German academia. I completed my PhD. as an Erasmus Mundus scholar in 2012. In October 2012 I joined the Department of Sociology at Presidency University as an Assistant Professor.
Research / Administrative Experience+
My research is in the area of the Sociology of Childhood. I am currently working on how childhood is "performed" in theatre by child and non child actors. I am also interested in historically researching children's experiences. My doctoral work was on how the imagination of childhood as a 'time out' from adulthood relates to the lived experiences of childhood among the middle classes. I am also interested in exploring childhood as Bildungsmoratoria in other socio-historical contexts in India and in the experiences of growing up and its self-images before economic liberalization. I am the convener of the University Annual Report Committee from 2014. I was joint convener of the University GenED Programme from 2015-2018.
Teaching / Other Experience+
I am currently teaching a postgraduate course on the Sociology of Childhood. The course introduces students to the main conceptual debates on childhood within the discipline from the 1990s. By looking at sources from varied contexts, it also acquaints students with the historical background in the South Asian context within which childhood acquired legislative, racial and other other significant meanings. The course was primarily aimed to urge students to look at other subdisciplines of Sociology from the lens of childhood. The undergraduate course I teach this semester is on Qualitative Research Methods. In addition to teaching students the various methods and theoretical debates around them, I also teach them to transcribe interviews and conversations. Throughout the semester, undergraduates are encouraged to try different methods and also write and discuss questions of identity, demeanour, existing social skills and how they can be deployed for research.
In teh alternate semester I teach a postgraduate course on Kinship in which earlier anthropological theories about Kinship are explored, in addition to the reconfiguration of concepts of kinship in contemporary Sociology following shifts in assisted reproduction technology, political crises, shifting notions about race, space, belonging etc .
I am also teaching a course on the Frankfurt School where students are introduced to some of the key arguments by Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Georg Marcuse and Walter Benjamin.
I also teach courses on Globalization and Indian society to postgraduate students and an optional course on the Sociology of childhood.
Post Graduate Supervision+
I am interested in supervising students working on childhood, transcultural connections, creative industries.
I have supervised students working on: childhood, labour, creative industries, chronological age, urban neighbourhoods, trades, clubs and queer associations.
I am curently supervising one PhD student working on the homestay industry on the Cinchona plantation in Kalimpong.
Academic Memberships+
Member of the Society for the History of Children and Youth from 2019
Publications+
Books
Sen, H. (2013). 'Time-Out' in the Land of Apu: Childhoods, Bildungsmoratorium and the Middle Classes of Urban West Bengal, Berlin. Springer, Vs Verlag Für Sozialwissenschaften.
Journal Article
2022 - Childhood, Youth, and Identity: A Roundtable Conversation
From the Global South, (coauthored with Kannan, D., Dar, A., Duff, S., Sen, H., Nag, S., and Bergere, C.), Journal of Childhood Studies, 47(2): 20-31.
2020 ‘Producing’ Childhood: The making of childhood and children in theatre’, Childhood, vol. 28, no. 1: 72-85.
2020 Book Review, Jill Sperandio, ‘Pioneering Education for Girls Across the Globe: Advocates and Entrepreneurs, 1742–1910’, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 2020, 13 (3): pp. 483-485.Sen, H. (2014): From Rabindra Sangit to Doraemon: Inheritance and Globalisation of Children’s Leisure Culture in Kolkata. In ASIEN:Vol. 130. 24-41.
Article in Edited Volumes
Sen, H (2021) Bengali daughter, Bengali Child: The roles and routes to understanding childhood, In Perez, R. and Fruzzeti, L. (eds). Transdisciplinary Ethnography in India, London: Routledge.Sen, H (2018) “Chasing Pareto” In Chaudhuri, M & Thakur M. (eds) Doing Theory: Locations, Hierarchies and Disjunctions, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.
Sen, H. (2016): Do the Mollycoddled Act? Children, Agency and disciplinary Entanglements in India In: Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood. New Perspectives in Childhood Studies, Eds, Esser, F., Baader, M., Betz, T. & Hungerland, B. London: Routledge, 197-210.
Sen, H. (2015): Halcyon Days ? Bengali Middle Class Childoods and tale of Transformation In :Changing India: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Ed. Saalmann, G. New Delhi: Winshield Press.
Sen, H. (2013):Koloniale Soziale Arbeit: Die Thematisierung der Kindheit in Indien: In, “Weltatlas„ Soziale Arbeit – jenseits aller Vermessung, Eds, Homfeldt, H.G., Bähr, C., Schröder, C., Schröer, W., & Schweppe, C. (Ed):, Weinheim/München: BELTZ Juventa, 182-197.
Book Reviews in Newspaper
May 2022 ‘Iridescent Yarn’, Review of “A Venetian At The Mughal Court: The Life and Adventures of Nicolo Manucci” by Marco Moneta, (New Delhi: Vintage), The Telegraph, India.
January 2022 ‘An Ark for the Deluge’, Review of “Diary of a Young Naturalist” by Dara McAnulty, (London: Penguin Random House), The Telegraph, India.
June 2021 ‘Library and Afterlife’, Review of “The Paris Library” by Janet Skeslien Charles, (London: Two Roads), The Telegraph, India.
January 2021 ‘Fluid Forms’, Review of “The Death of Vivek Oji” by Akwaeke Emezi (London: Faber and Faber), The Telegraph, India.
September 2020 ‘Getting under the City’s Skin’, Review of “Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi” by Amita Baviskar (New Delhi: Sage), The Telegraph, India.
November 2019 ‘A Glimpse of Distinct Themes in a Vast, Woven Carpet’, Review of “Socioliterary Cultures in South Asia” by Anisur Rahman (New Delhi: Niyogi Books), The Telegraph, India.
Review of Anisur Rahman's Socioliterary Cultures in South Asia, The Telegraph, India, November 2019.
“Everyday Anxieties”, Review of Mahima Nayar’s Against All Odds: Psychosocial Distress and Healing among Women, The Telegraph, India, 22 June 2019.
“Life Beyond Pity and Shame”, Review of Sohaila Abdulali’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, The Telegraph, India, 29 March 2019.
“No Azaadi for Dalit Agricultural Labourers”, Review of Anand Chakravarti’s Is this ‘Azaadi’? Everyday lives of Dalit agricultural labourers in a Bihar village, The Telegraph, India, 2 November 2018.
"Lens refocused", Review of Maitrayee Chaudhuri’s Refashioning India: Gender, Media and a Transformed Public Discourse, The Telegraph, India, 19 January 2018.
"Stoic Faces of Survival", Review of Kota Neelima’s Widows of Vidarbha: Making of Shadows, The Telegraph, Kolkata, 11 May 2018.
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