WOMEN’S STUDIES PROGRAMME

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH STUDENTS COLLOQUIUM
WOMEN’S STUDIES PROGRAMME, SSS, JNU

The Women’s Studies Programme, JNU, wishes to inaugurate an ongoing Research Students Colloquium on gender and feminist studies. As part of this colloquium the WSP will provide the intellectual space for research students working on any area related to gender/feminist/women’s issues to share either work in progress or methodological problems with others working in related areas, even though with different disciplinary emphasis.
The main purpose of this colloquium is to provide research students with an interdisciplinary context within which to discuss problems that arise from particular disciplinary concerns. It is now well accepted that feminist analysis redefines traditional categories and disciplinary concepts through its attention to gender and other social categories such as class, caste, ethnicity/nationality, religious community, sexual orientation, and age, amongst others. However, students embarking on their first significant piece of research often face impediments because of either methodological problems, or the absence of sufficient theoretical grounding in addressing gender and feminist issues.
As part of this colloquium, the presentations, and the ensuing discussions, we hope that we shall be able to engage with:

1.  How interdisciplinary feminist perspectives inform research methods, and engage with the specificities of disciplinary concerns.

2.  How knowledge is constructed and deployed, and how this has an impact on feminist methodology.

3.  Ways of finding, formulating, limiting, and stating a research problem from a feminist perspective; conduct critical literature reviews; and select/combine appropriate research methodologies informed by readings and discussion.
We also hope that this forum will engage centrally with theoretical issues and might, over time, lead to a feminist theory reading group.

G. Arunima
Associate Professor
Women’s Studies Programme
School of Social Sciences
JNU
Tel: 26704178(off)
Email: arunima.gopinath@gmail.com