SARA BARDHAN
Hello, I am a graduate student studying the intersection of urban policy, critical geography and social justice. Before joining the School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) to read Urban Policy and Governance, I graduated with honours in Business Studies, Economics and Literature and I hold a Diploma in Liberal Studies. My wide-ranging research interests center around urbanisation, gender, urban health and sanitation, feminist urbanisms, and urban futures, fantasies and pleasures in the Global South and especially in Mumbai. Some of this work has appeared in the Journal of Feminist Scholarship, Doing Sociology, with the Social and Political Research Foundation, and have been presented with Stanford University, Centre for Internet and Society, Rethinking Economics India and Delhi University.
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My public writing traverses between academia and reportage wherein I regularly write columns about gender and queerness in South Asia, and politics, life and culture in Mumbai for international and domestic publications like India Development Review, The Wire, The Fuller Project, Citizen Matters (Mumbai), Feminism in India and Gaysi Family. Read more about my research and writing here.
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I am a recipient of the Don Lavoie Fellowship (2022) at Mercatus Centre, George Mason University where I was part of an interdisciplinary cohort of graduate students and advanced undergraduates interested in exploring key ideas in political economy and learning how to utilize these ideas in academic and policy research. As a Don Lavoie fellow, I studied a history of economic thought with key readings in Lavoie, Hayek, and Boettke.
I was also a Youth Against Tobacco (YAT) Fellow (2022) at Young Leaders for Active Citizenship (YLAC) where I was part of a select cohort being trained in mainstreaming a youth-centered tobacco control narrative in India. I was placed with Manbhum Ananda Ashram Nityananda Trust (MANT), West Bengal for six weeks. MANT has been working to improve health service delivery for marginalised peoples and Adivasi persons in Eastern and North-east India since 1960. With MANT, I worked towards understanding tobacco cessation from the lens of policy and technology.
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Apart from academics, I used to volunteer with Claylab Education Foundation as a mentor where I supported young students in higher secondary from marginalised and low-income families in their higher education, and career aspirations. I have also been an active volunteer with Indian LGBTQ+ organisations such as All India Queer Association, Queer Alliance TISS and Jamia Queer Collective since 2016. In the past six years, I have co-founded Naaz—an LGBTQ+ organisation at my alma mater; lobbied for queer/Trans* rights; raised funds for LGBTQ+ organisations; helped arrange the Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad Pride parades; co-organised #MeToo circles; examined digital queer cultures and curated a living repository of queer/trans aesthetics.
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