Mala Pandurang

Dr.Mala Pandurang is Professor/Principal at Dr. BMN College of Home Science  (Autonomous). She is a   postdoctoral fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany) and has been nominated as ‘Ambassador Scientist to India’  for 2019-2022. She has also availed of short research- grant visits to the Universities of  Osnabruck, Augsburg,  Frankfurt, Potsdam, and Chemnitz through the sponsorship of the AvH.

Her research grants include Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; recipient of the Charles Wallace In-UK Research grant;  1 Major research grant and 3 Minor research grants from the University Grants Commission (New Delhi); Inlaks Fellowship in Social Sciences from the Asiatic Society (Mumbai);   Associateship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (Shimla); and NET/JRF from the UGC.  Under her tenure,  Dr. BMN College has been selected as a UGC STRIDE Centre for Research Capacity Building ( 2020-2023). Her areas of research include postcolonial writing, diaspora theory, and gender studies.    

She has published 7 books and 43 research papers. In 2012 she received the SNDT Women’s University ‘Maharshi Karve Utkarshta Shikshak Puraskar’ (Best Teacher Award) from the Governor of Maharashtra.

At ELS 2020, Dr. Pandurang will talk on ‘On community, commuting and urban spaces – Literary representations of the Mumbai local trains‘.

Considered as among the heaviest passenger transit systems in the world,  the enforced lockdown due to the  COVID-19 pandemic has brought the load of the intricate suburban railway network of Mumbai down to a   minimum,  and yet reinforced the centrality of the trains to the lives of Mumbaikars.  My presentation will explore literary representations of the ‘local trains’  and use the same to link the centrality of the daily commute to the suburban culture of a city   ‘that never sleeps’’.