For over 40 years, Professor Patricia Jeffery, Professor Emerita in Sociology, University of Edinburgh, carried out pioneering research, individually and in partnership with her colleagues. The range of subjects she covered includes gender and development, especially childbearing, women’s reproductive rights, social demography in South Asia, Indian society, gender and communal politics, education and the reproduction of inequality; race and ethnicity. Her books, including Frogs in a Well: Indian Women in Purdah (1979) and Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism, Politicized Religion and the State in South Asia (edited with Amrita Basu, 1998) inspired peers and future scholars alike. In this volume, we bring together a range of new research that is inspired by and intersects with Professor Jeffery’s work. The chapters offer new data, refreshing insights and original analysis on subjects of contemporary importance in the fields of gender, health, marginalization and development.

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SHRUTI CHAUDHRY is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral research was completed at Edinburgh Sociology and was supervised by Patricia Jeffery. Her research focuses on migration, family and intimate relationships, ageing and the life course, social change, gender and intersecting inequalities explored in the context of India and the South Asian diasporas in Scotland. She is the author of Moving for Marriage: Inequalities, Intimacy and Women’s Lives in Rural North India (2021), a comparative ethnographic study of women who migrate for marriage, regionally and cross-regionally, to become brides in western Uttar Pradesh.

HUGO GORRINGE is a senior lecturer in Sociology and former co-director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His first academic post was as a replacement lecturer to Patricia Jeffery. His research interests focus on Dalit movements and politics in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He is the author of Untouchable Citizens (2005) and Panthers in Parliament (2017) which address the rise of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) and their entry into politics. He has co-edited a number of volumes including From the Margins to the Mainstream (2016, with Suryakant Waghmore and Roger Jeffery), Civility in Crisis (2020, with Suryakant Waghmore) and Caste in Everyday Life (2023, with Dhaneswar Bhoi). He has also written numerous articles on caste, violence and politics.

RADHIKA GOVINDA is a senior lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh and the Director of GENDER.ED – the university’s interdisciplinary hub for gender and sexualities studies. She convenes Gender and Development – a postgraduate course that Patricia Jeffery designed and convened for many years. Her research focuses on the gender politics of development, intersecting inequalities and feminist knowledge production. She has co-edited Doing Feminisms in the Academy in India and the UK (Zubaan 2021, with Fiona Mackay, Krishna Menon and Rukmini Sen). She has also published a number of articles on gender, caste, masculinities, feminist activism and development in India.

This collection of essays brings together auto-ethnographic, critical and comparative reflections on doing feminisms in the academy in contemporary India and the UK. Written by emergent and seasoned academics from a range of disciplinary, social and (geo)political locations, these essays explore the transformative potential, dilemmas and challenges of teaching, learning, researching and working as feminist academics. By engaging with questions of identity and difference, institutional and classroom pedagogies, reflexivity and accountability, and the production and circulation of feminist and non-feminist knowledge, the essays in this collection also provide the frame and the lens through which to view the wider landscape of contemporary higher education.

Anchored in feminist scholarship and written in an accessible style, the collection will be useful to those interested in feminist, women’s and gender studies, and more broadly those keen to pursue equality in higher education and decentring of knowledge production globally.

RADHIKA GOVINDA is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her work examines gender politics at the intersections of caste, class, race and religion in women’s and social movements, in development policies and practice, in everyday social relations in rural and urban spaces, and in the global dynamics of knowledge production.

FIONA MACKAY is Professor of Politics and Director of genderED, the University of Edinburgh’s interdisciplinary hub for gender and sexualities studies. She teaches and researches in the areas of gender and politics. She founded and co-directs the Feminism and Institutionalism International Network.

KRISHNA MENON is a Professor of Gender Studies, and currently Dean of the School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi. She is also Associate Editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics and author of Social Movements in Contemporary India (2019).

RUKMINI SEN is Professor of Sociology in the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of sociology of law, feminist pedagogy, narrative methods, relationships and intimacies. She is a member of the Indian Association for Women’s Studies and has served on its Executive Committee.