Teaching
Courses
Education
- PhD in Sociology, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
- PG Diploma in Gender Culture and Development Studies, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune
- MA in Sociology, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune
- BA in Sociology, St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata
Profile
Sancharini is a social science researcher whose work explores the question of menstrual embodiment as situated at the intersections of the larger structures of patriarchy, feminist articulations, and development interventions in contemporary India.
Sancharini was awarded the ‘Women Leading IITM’ grant (2024) by the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in support of her doctoral dissertation. She has also offered lectures as a Teaching Assistant in courses like ‘Development Alternatives’ and ‘Women in India’, at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. Alongside her research, Sancharini has worked as a book illustrator and a translator.
In her doctoral research, she critically examined selected feminist campaigns and a State-run adolescent health program (post 2010) to not only understand the diverse gender discourses emerging from these two sites, but also how these discourses shaped lived embodied experiences. The study also analysed how the menstruating body is differently framed across feminist and development discourses and explored the implications of these framings for broader debates on gender, sexuality, and public health in India. Moreover, the study engaged with the question of ‘resistance’ – highlighting the varied ways in which menstruators from different caste-class and religious locales assert their agency, either overtly or subtly, while challenging menstrual stigma or negotiating bodily autonomy in the private and public spheres.
Research Interests
- Body and embodiment
- Feminist activisms
- Gender and development
- Sexual and reproductive health
Publications
Journal Article
- Mitra, Sancharini, & Kalpana Karunakaran. (2024). Challenging Stigma, Shame and the Social Control of the Menstruating Body: Women’s Resistance in Contemporary India. Indian Journal of Gender Studies (SAGE Publications), 31(3), 351-371. https://doi.org/10.1177/09715215241262355
Book Chapter
- Mitra, Sancharini. (2020). Peer Sexual Bullying in Schools and Cyberbullying among Adolescents: Addressing Gendered Violence in the Intersecting Spaces of the Physical and the Virtual. In B. Dey (Ed.), Representation of Women Space (Vol. 3, pp. 90-102). New Delhi: Kunal Books. ISBN – 9789389224719.
Book Translation
- Hasan, Mushirul. (2018). Swadhinatar Path: Oupanibeshik Bharate Bandira [Roads to Freedom: Prisoners in Colonial India]. Translated (to Bengali) by Sancharini Mitra. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN – 9780199485581. URL: https://india.oup.com/product/swadhinatar-path-
Modules for e-books
- Mitra, Sancharini. (2018). Debate on Urban Settings. In A. Chari Wagh (Ed.), Sociology of India. INFLIBNET Centre. Retrieved from: https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/socp4/chapter/debate-on-urban-settings/
- Mitra, Sancharini, & V. Abhinaya. (2018). Modernization of Tradition. In A. Chari Wagh (Ed.), Sociology of India. INFLIBNET Centre. Retrieved from: https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/socp4/chapter/module-name-title-modernization-oftradition/
- Mitra, Sancharini. (2018). Conceptualizing Sex, Patriarchy, Gender and Sexual Division of Labour. In A. Chari Wagh (Ed.), Sociology of Genders. INFLIBNET Centre. Retrieved from: https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/socp10/chapter/conceptualizing-sex-patriarchygender-transgender-and-sexual-division-of-labour/