Sayendri Panchadhyayi, B.A., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Sayendri Panchadhyayi is an Assistant Professor & Program Head of Sociology in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences (SoLAS), RV University, Bangalore. Her work lies at the intersections of social gerontology, medical anthropology, sociology of care and lifecourse, death and bereavement, and feminist STS. She specializes in qualitative research methods including ethnography, qualitative interviewing, case studies, content analysis and FGDs. She has acted as a reviewer for journals such as Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine (SAGE), Social Change (SAGE), Journal of Women & Aging (Taylor & Francis), Gender, Work & Organization (Wiley), Health Science Reports (Wiley), Journal of Social and Economic Development (Springer), and International Journal of Care and Caring (Bristol University Press).
She holds an honorary appointment as an Associate at the Centre for Care, housed within the University of Sheffield and an invited member in the Centre for Care International Partnerships Working Group. She is also the co-founder of Sabr .
Her PhD research weaves the universe of carework and labour of ayahs attending to older people ageing and dying in the precincts of private homes in low-to-middle-income settings. While recruitment of ayahs are fueled by the interacting streams of feminization of care, labour of subaltern women in maintaining caste-class domestic spaces, and abbreviation of care in resource-constraint environments. They emerge more than these typified and diminutive stereotypes foisted upon them, and attest critical lessons on ageing in the wake of care crisis, disparate living arrangements, inequitable distribution of power and resources, and disrupted intergeneralities.
She is open to Ph.D. supervision in the areas of gender, carework and intimacy, science and technology studies, ageing and life course, death and thanatopolitics, and work and organization.
Get in touch for pro-bono academic writing coaching or research mentoring.
She is married to Deborshee Sen.
Student Output
Mishika Chauhan , a (former) full-time Ph.D. student working under my supervision on the questions of social vitality and social death in Manipur. She has a B.A. (Hons.) in English from Ramjas College, University of Delhi and M.A. in Gender Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi.
Mishika Chauhan has contributed an evocative review of 'Yaari' for Sabr.
Four students from the Sociology Minor Programme (UG 3rd-year and UG 2nd-year) RVU have been selected to participate in the residential, Manipal Research Internship 2024 held between 16th - 20th December, 2024.
Meet her mentees!
Adedayo Adeagbo, Department of Sociology and Criminology, Kent State University, interested in aging, health and technology.
N Aswathi, Department of Architecture and Planning, National Institute of Technology Calicut interested in inclusive planning, gender studies and public policy.
Connect
Work-in-progress
Developing monograph under contract with Routledge (under preparation).
Developing solo-authored chapter for an anthology for Penguin Random House India on the 'Indian Care Debates' edited by Divya Ravindranath and Prabha Kotishwaran (under review).
Paper with Aparna Vincent on Visual Ageing (under preparation).
Solo-authored manuscript for a special issue on Intersections of Migration and Ageing: Challenges and Solutions for the Southern Hemisphere for Frontiers in Public Health edited by Irudaya Rajan Sebastian, Dipti Govil and Cv Irshad (under preparation).
News & Announcements
March 2026: December 2025: Essay in an anthology titled 'Sandook: Everyone, Everyday, Engendered' edited by Priyadarshini Bhattacharya with Penguin India.
November 2025: Organizing a panel for BSG-SIG on 'Technology, Market and Ageing in the LMICs'.
October 2025: Article 'Ayahs at the deathbed re-visioning elder care' has been included as part of a session titled 'Death and Care from a Global Perspective' for the Politics of Care course offered by Camille Allard to Dept. of Political and Social Sciences, University of Milan and special lecture for UG students.
October 2025: Selected as a mentor in ASDS (Association for the Studies in Death and Society) Early Career Researcher's Mentoring Scheme 2025-2026.
September 2025: September: Invited to prepare a full-length manuscript for a special issue of Frontiers in Public Health (Scopus Q1).
July - August 2025: Invited to teach selected modules of 'Sociology of Ageing and Care' (online) for Department of Sociology, University of Calcutta.
July: Invited talk as part of NIAS Wednesday Discussion organized by National Institute of Advanced Studies.
June 2025: Co-chairing a roundtable with Jane McCarthy titled 'Transitions towards breaking silences' organized by CDAS Annual Conference 2025.
June 2025: Invited keynote speaker for the CDAS Annual conference 2025 titled Death in transition.
May 2025: Paper presentation for Tongues: Medical Humanities across Linguistic and Cultural Frontiers organized by NNMHR Congress 2025.
May 2025: Convenor for a workshop-cum-training session on publication under the aegis of SoLAS, RVU.
May 2025: Invited to participate in a panel on 'AI & Ethics in Practice' organized by SDI, RVU at Bangalore International Centre (BIC).
May 2025: Panelist for a symposium titled 'Tackling emerging and complex health and resource base challenges of older adults in low and middle-income settings using innovative and interdisciplinary methods' organized by BSG-Special Interest Group (SIG) on Ageing in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
April 2025: Online symposium titled Tackling emerging and complex health and resource base challenges of older adults in low and middle-income settings using innovative and interdisciplinary methods organized by BSG-Special Interest Group (SIG) on Ageing in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
March 2025: Book chapter in 'Handbook of Social Justice in the Global South' under contract with Edward Elgar Publishing (EEP) as part of Elgar Original Reference Series (SCOPUS-indexed).
March 2025: Fiery agent of change, Op-Ed in 'Opinion' section of 'Telegraph'.
March 2025: A project in collaboration with Dr. Aparna Vincent, IIM-Indore funded by Seeds Money Project Scheme.
March 2025: Invited plenary speaker for a conference on 'Ageing well' organized by Department of Sociology, University of Calcutta funded by National Institute of Social Defence Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
March 2025: Invited member to the Centre for Care International Partnerships Working Group.
February 2025: Invited speaker for a 2-day workshop on “The Indian Care Debates: Taking Stock, Reimagining Work, Rights, and Social Reproduction” organized by The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London and the School of Human Development, Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS, Bangalore).
January 2025: Invited speaker for a panel on 'Ethical Design in the age of AI' organized by Bangalore Design Week in IISc, Bangalore.
January 2025: Solo-authored Ayahs at the deathbed re-visioning elder care: bereavement support and anchorage for in-home dying older adults in urban India in a special issue on 'Innovation at the End-of-life' in Mortality (Taylor & Francis and SCOPUS Q1) as part of 20-years of CDAS, University of Bath (Online first).
January 2025: An excerpt of my review of Teppo Kröger's Care Poverty has been included in the official review section on Amazon and Springer (publisher of the book).
December 2024: Signed contract with Routledge to produce a solo-authored monograph for the 'Society and Aging' series.
November 2024: Discussant on 'Human-artifice assemblage and more-than-human loss' and memorialization for 'more-than-human loss' workshop organized by CDAS, University of Bath, UK.
November 2024: Interviewed by WION for an explanatory piece on demographic maturation and declining fertility in Southern India.
November 2024: Inducted as an external associate in the Centre for Care.
November 2024: Official launch of Sabr.
October 2024: Publication of Technologized Intimacies and Posthuman Kinship Across the Life Course in 'Anthropology & Aging' And Introduction to the publication.
October 2024: Publication of 'Aging Widows in the Devotional Geography of Rural West Bengal' in a special issue on 'Ageing in India and the USA: A comparative perspective by 'Society' (Springer).
October 2024: Invited lecture as part of 'Politics of Care' workshop organized by the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan.
September 2024: Will be delivering invited special lectures to Dept. of Sociology, University of Calcutta on 'Ageing and Retirement' and 'Intergenerational Relations' for 'Sociology of Ageing and Care' course.
September 2024: Recognized as a Research Supervisor in the PhD Programme of RV University.
August 2024: Accepted invitation for contribution to 'Anthology on Gender' under the aegis of Penguin publication.
August 2024: Assistant Professor update featured in University of Hyderabad Herald.
August 2024: Book review of 'Care and the Pluriverse: Rethinking Global Ethics” by Maggie FitzGerald.
July 2024: Paper presentation (virtual) on 'Longing and Belonging in Care: Ayahs caring for older people in India and re-reading ‘healthy ageing' at the British Society of Gerontology (BSG) Annual Conference 2024 hosted by Newcastle University.
June 2024: Official website launch of Sabr.
June 2024: Session talk entitled 'Warp and Weft: Urban as the Visual Catalyst for Benign Consumption' on the topic of 'Contemporary Visual Cultures: Diversifying Teaching and Research Practices' for FDP organized by VIT-AP.
May 2024: My article Ayahs: from the colonial to the contemporary published in Sabr.
April 2024: Public lecture on Protection of rights of elderly people in India in socio-legal issues, challenges and our priorities in the global modernised world organized by Surendranath Law College and NSS Cell, Presidency University.
April 2024: Book review of 'Care and Support Rights After Neoliberalism' published in International Journal of Care and Caring (Bristol University Press) - Scopus.
March 2024: Book review of 'Care Poverty' published in Anthropology & Aging (Journal of the Association for Anthropology & Gerontology) - Scopus and Web of Sciences-indexed.
March 2024: Paper presentation invitation at the Age and Generation Network (AGENET) of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) on ‘Kinning, Moving, and Growing in Later Life.
March 2024: Plenary session debate on 'Debating the Role of Technology in Kinship and ‘Desirable’ Aging Futures' organized by Anthropology & Ageing for EASA-AGENET Conference 2024 (debate text will be published). Title: Technologized intimacies and hybrid kinship in framing care and later-life support.
March 2024: A care justice pathway to empower older women with dementia in National Seminar on creating a dementia-friendly society for elderly citizens: Issues and Challenges organized by Department of Sociology, Jamia Milia Islamia Central University in collaboration with National Institute of Social Defence, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India, New Delhi.
Feb 2024: Invited talk as part of the Global South Speaker Series at the Centre for Social Science Research, The Global South Research Hub, George Mason University, USA.
Feb 2024: Seminar talk for Centre for Care chaired by Sue Yeandle.
Feb 2024: Plenary speaker for 'Gender, Demography and Care in India' chaired by Dr. Ketaki Chowkhani organized by Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal Academy Higher Education (MAHE), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
December 2023: I have received funding to present paper on 'Cultures of Childhood in Contemporary South Asia' in South Asian University organized jointly by Department of Sociology, South Asian University (SAU), Child Rights and You (CRY, Delhi) and ICSSR.
November 2023: International Associate at the Centre for Care, a collaboration between the Universities of Sheffield, Birmingham, Kent and Oxford, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Office for National Statistics, and three leading charities : Carers UK, the National Children's Bureau and the Social Care Institute for Excellence.
November 2023: I will be speaking at the Roundtable and Discussion on the topic of "Care in Crisis" as a part of Covid in the House of Old Exhibit organized by the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, and the Montreal History Group. Title: Unpacking care poverty and thanatopolitics of the state in the COVID hours.
November 2023: The Dismantled Clock: Chronicling Parietal Osteosarcoma and Waiting for Healing, The Polyphony, Institute of Medical Humanities - Durham University.
November 2023: Visiting faculty at National Law School of India University (NLSIU) offering a full-time elective course on 'Ageing, Lifecourse and Death Studies'.
September 2023: I have been invited to give a talk as part of the The Ayah and Amah International Research Network, Seminar Series 2023, organized by The Ayah and Amah International Research Network, London School of Economics and Political Science. Chair: Swapna Banerjee.
August 2023: My article The Tedium of Chronic Waiting: Delay, Temporality and Gender in Access to Healthcare in India has been published in The Polyphony, a platform by the Institute of Medical Humanities - Durham University.
July 2023: I have been awarded funding from the British Sociological Association to attend the Annual Medical Sociology Conference 2023 at the University of Sussex, UK.
June 2023: I have been selected to submit a full-length manuscript for the special issue of Mortality (Routledge - Taylor & Francis) on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Centre for Death & Society, University of Bath, UK on the theme 'Innovation at the end of life'.
May 2023: I won the Best Paper Award at the Second Global South Students' Conference organized by the Center for Social Science Research, George Mason University, USA.
January 2022: I joined as a part of the Age, Care and the Caring Crisis Working Group, an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional initiative of BISR (Birkbeck Institute of Social Research), University of London.