Director of Studies for Human, Social, and Political Sciences (HSPS), St Edmund’s College

Parul Bhandari is a sociologist specialising in the study of class (elites and the middle class), gender, family, love, marriage and intimacies in contemporary South Asia. She is Director of Studies for Human, Social, and Political Sciences (HSPS), St. Edmund’s College.

She was Associate Professor of Sociology at O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), India, and has held Guest Faculty positions at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, and the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics (DSE), University of Delhi. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin, and the Centre of South Asian Studies (CSAS), University of Cambridge. Her research interests in the study of elites was developed as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), Delhi (South Asia research unit for the CNRS). She is an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Multilevel Federalism (CMF), Institute of Social Sciences, Delhi, and was Book Review Editor for Contributions to Indian Sociology. She was a student at St. Edmund’s College whilst pursuing an MPhil and doctorate in Sociology.

Bhandari’s books include Matchmaking in Middle Class India: Beyond Arranged and Love Marriage (Springer, 2020), Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects, (Routledge, London 2019), and Exploring Indian Modernities: Ideas and Practices (co-edited) (Springer, 2018), and two more on love and intimacy in South Asia, are forthcoming. In addition, Bhandari’s research has been published in academic journals including Contemporary South Asia, Gender, Place & Culture, and South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (SAMAJ). Her works are accessible to non-specialists by way of her regular writings in popular outlets such as The Hindustan Times, The Conversation, Scroll.in, and participation on panel discussions and podcasts for BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, and NDTV.