Alumna-Interaction session (19)

Report on Alumna-Interaction session (19)
 
The 19th in the series of virtual Alumna interaction sessions was held on 19 February ‘22 and featured Vanisha Pandia, who is a 2017 graduate from the undergraduate honours programme in English Lit. The session was called “Literary Studies, Translations and Beyond”. 

 

Vanisha talked about her experience of pursuing a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies at Christ University, Bengaluru, which opened up a whole new world of scholarship and research for her, ranging from Bioethics to Digital Immigration She then went on to seeking newer areas of experience which included a stint as Knowledge Associate at MasterG and Daughters the first all-women social enterprise ecosystem for apparel design and training programmes. There, she worked towards empowering women from marginalized, rural areas and tier-2 cities. Those were women with unequal access to decision-making and means of livelihood in the highly gendered area of pattern-making. So, the aim of the venture was to break the pattern of exclusion and increase women’s representation by up-skilling them and opening training centres for more women to learn pattern-making.

 

Vanisha also shared some of her key learnings when she worked as an Editorial Assistant in a Jaipur-based literary agency - Siyahi - as well as when she assisted on a research project entitled “The Second World War and Modern South Asia”, before enrolling herself for Doctoral Studies. 

 

The presentation concluded with an interaction and a Q&A round. It was a very informative session and helped the attendees form a broader perspective on how a degree in English studies can provide them with a diverse range of academic and research-related career avenues as also the option of entrepreneurship in the social impact sector.