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Max Mueller Bhavan | India Kolkata

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6:30 PM

(En)Gendering The Economy of Kolkata

Panel Discussion|Speakes: Tista Das, Paromita Chakravarti and Supurna Banerjee

(En)Gendering The Economy of Kolkata © Samata Biswas / Bombay Duck

Empowerment - logo © Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai

This panel discussion explores three distinct forms of women’s migration to the city, in this case, Kolkata – continuing in the vein inaugurated by the film screening the day before. By focusing on refugee women, sex workers and women in new forms of labour (especially tech and gig) the panel discussion both highlights the contributions made by them and the challenges face by them in creating the modern metropolis.

Speakers

  • Tista teaches History at Bankura University, She is the author of Unattached Women, Able Bodied Men and of Desher Manush (Itihashe Hatekhori). Tista is also the co-editor of Rethinking the Local in Indian Hisotry. Tista’s research interest centers around gender and partition.

  • Paromita Chakravarti is a Professor in the Department of English at Jadavpur University, where she has also served as the Director of the School of Women's Studies. Her academic background includes a D.Phil from the University of Oxford, focusing on early modern discourses of madness. Her teaching and research interests encompass Renaissance drama, women's writing, queer studies, and film studies. She has introduced innovative courses, including the first Masters program in Queer Studies in India (2005), and has led national and international projects on gender in textbooks, sex education, and related topics. Some notable publications include Women Contesting Culture: Changing Frames of Gender Politics in India (2012), Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas (2018), and Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare: All the World's His Stage (2021). She has recently co-edited Cultures of Ageing and Ageism in India and research and conceptualized Sex(work) and the City by Nirantar Trust, which won a Laldli Media Award.

  • Supurna Banerjee is a gender studies scholar and public intellectual based in Kolkata. She teaches at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK), where her work examines labour, migration, gender, sexuality, and precarious economies in South Asia. Her research foregrounds feminist and queer perspectives on informal work, service sectors, and urban transformations. Banerjee has published widely in academic journals and edited volumes, and contributes actively to public debates on workers’ rights and gender justice. She is committed to interdisciplinary research, mentoring, and building critical dialogue between academia, activism, and policy through sustained feminist scholarship and engagement.