My teaching interests lie at the intersection of social anthropology, political sociology, and higher education studies. I am particularly interested in teaching courses on caste and inequality, decolonisation, critical pedagogy, student movements, academic freedom, belonging, and knowledge production. My teaching approach encourages critical reading, interdisciplinary dialogue, and reflection on how universities reproduce and challenge social inequalities.
Winter Semester 2026/27
Bielefeld University, Germany
MA: Sociology and Anthropology of the Global World (Seminar)
Course No.: 300663 [View Course Details ↗]
Higher education institutions across the globe are undergoing profound transformations. These transformations can be understood at four interconnected levels:
Increasing international student mobility, predominantly from the Global South to the Global North, has reimagined the university as a transnational space where diverse identities, cultures, and epistemologies intersect in the production of knowledge.
The neo-liberalisation of higher education, which frames education as a commodity, has intensified inequalities in access across regions and social groups.
Growing heterogeneity in student enrolment across disciplines and institutions has generated new socio-spatial configurations shaped by race, class, caste, and other identity markers. While this heterogenisation accommodated historically marginalised groups, it also unsettles and reconfigures entrenched academic hierarchies.
Persistent structural inequalities in access to higher education raise questions about epistemic agency, such as who produces knowledge and whose knowledge is legitimate and recognised.
In this course, we bring these four transformations into the centre to examine the complexities and contradictions of decolonisation in higher education. Drawing on interdisciplinary debates and perspectives, this course explores how decolonial approaches can address these ongoing shifts. Rather than framing decolonisation merely as an institutional process, this course foregrounds it as an epistemic and political project, inviting dialogue across intersectional and postcolonial frameworks.
Teaching Staff: Cherie Audrey Desiderio Alfiler & Vidyasagar Sharma, Bielefeld University