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SOUTH ASIAN UNIVERSITY

A University Established by SAARC Nations

SOUTH ASIAN UNIVERSITY

A University established by SAARC Nations

Payel C. Mukherjee

Assistant Professor
PhD - English Literature, IIT Gandhinagar

Contact Details

payelcmukherjee(at)sau.int
South Asian University, Rajpur Road, Maidan Garhi, New Delhi - 110068

Profile

Dr. Payel Chattopadhyay Mukherjee develops insights into contemporary topics of national identity and the theoretical frameworks of nationalism and cosmopolitanism by drawing on the literary contributions and intellectual discussions among Indian thinkers from the late 19th and early 20th century,  which contributes to a broader understanding of the transnational circulation of ideas. Her interdisciplinary work is in light of the region's cultural history, grounded in postcolonial theory, histories of the colonial empire in India, and South Asian literary studies. One of her current focuses is on the Bengali Polymath and Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore. She has been exploring, on the one hand, diverse intellectual exchanges, and on the other, the cultural practices of everyday life through Tagore's writings and interactions with his contemporaries that engages with the ideas of nation, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, ecology, and cultural modernity, providing vital lessons for both current debates and the region's cultural history.

Dr. Payel Chattopadhyay Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Design, South Asian University in New Delhi where she is also the In-Charge of the South Asian Centre for Languages and Cultures. She is also a Research Affiliate of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs), Edinburgh and the Associate Editor of its peer-reviewed International journal. She was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh, in 2024; and formerly an Adjunct Faculty member in the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, from 2020 to 2025. She has previously established and headed the Humanities Initiative, Academic Writing Lab (AWL) , IIIT Delhi (August 2019 - Dec 2025) and has been the Faculty Coordinator, Writer’s lab at Ahmedabad University (2018 - 2019). Dr. Payel C Mukherjee has served as an expert for various course developments at different universities, and has been invited as a resource person to conduct courses and workshops at NID Ahmedabad, IIM Kashipur, IIM Bodhgaya, and IIM Indore.

Personal website: https://pcmukherjee.wordpress.com/

Qualifications

  • PhD in Humanities and Social Sciences (English Literature), IIT Gandhinagar
  • M.A in English, University of Burdwan
  • B.A Hons in English, Hooghly Mohsin College, University of Burdwan
Teaching and work experience :
  • Assistant Professor of English, English, South Asian University, New Delhi (Dec 2025 - present)
  • Visiting Faculty, Dept. of Social Sciences and Humanities, Indraprastha Institute of Technology (IIIT), Delhi (August 2020 - December 2025)
  • Full-Time Lecturer, Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIITD) (August 2019 - August 2020)
  • Faculty Fellow, Centre for Learning Futures, Ahmedabad University (February 2017 - July 2019)
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (August 2015 – January 2017)
  • Taught courses at IIM Indore, IIM Kashipur, IIM Bodh Gaya

Research Interests

  • Theories of nationalism and the conceptual history of the nation
  • Postcolonial theory and the intellectual afterlives of colonial empire
  • Colonial modernity and the formation of political and cultural imaginaries in India
  • Rabindranath Tagore and intellectual history of ideas
  • South Asian literary-cultural studies.

Research Fellowships and Awards

  • The Strathmartine Trust Award, St Andrews, Scotland, June 2025
  • Awarded Charles Wallace India Trust Short Term Research Grant, June - July, 2024.
  • Nominated Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, June-July 2024
  • Research Affiliate, The Scottish Centre for Tagore Studies (ScoTs), Edinburgh, June-July 2024.
  • Co-lead, Project in Collaborative Teaching (PICT), Funded by University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
  • Global Community Service Fund, The Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Saskatchewan, 1 February 2018 – 1 July 2020.
  • Global Ambassador Program: Incoming expert and Faculty travel grant, University of Saskatchewan, 20-30 April 2018.
  • International Research and Partnerships Office, Grant for PICT, Pilot study, October 2017.

Academic Recognitions

  • IIIT Delhi Teaching Excellence Award - 2020, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026.
  • IIIT Delhi Distinguished Teaching Excellence Award 2025, 2026.
  • The Director’s Gold Medal for overall outstanding performance among all the PhD students
  • graduating in 2016, IIT Gandhinagar
  • The Graduate student paper prize 2014 for the paper titled "Emergence of theCosmopolitan national
  • in Midnight's Children and Maximum City" at the 14th Annual conference of South Asian Literary
  • Association (SALA), Chicago, IL, USA.

Academic Contributions

  • Associate Editor of Gitanjali and Beyond, A Journal of the Scottish Centre for Tagore Studies (ScoTs). 
  • Head, Humanities Initiative, Academic Writing Lab (AWL) , IIIT Delhi (August 2019 - Dec 2025)
  • Faculty Coordinator, Writer’s lab, Ahmedabad University (2018 - 2019)
  • Adjunct Professor, Department of English, University of Saskatchewan, Canada (Jan 2020 - July 2025)
  • Reviewer, South Asian Review (referred journal of South Asian Literary Organisation), Taylor and Francis Publication. 2022, 2023.
  • Reviewer, Psychological Studies, Springer, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022. Invited Reviewer, Global Media Journal, Canadian Edition, 2022.
  • Reviewer, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Taylor and Francis Online, 2023, 2024.
  • External Expert Reviewer, Book Proposal on Trauma and South Asian Literature, Routledge, September 2021
  • Expert Advisor to Ms.Vijay Kachru, FinalYear Student, MFA, University of Saskatchewan, in her Research for her Thesis subject -Post partition violence in Punjabi Villages in India (December 2017)
  • Faculty Organizer and mentor, World Class Day, 24 -25 March, 2019; 16 -17 November 2019; 16 March 2020. Hosted by University of Saskatchewan.
  • Content writer and author, Module on "Issues of the local and global in New Literature in English", e-PGPathshala, National Mission on Education through ICT, An MHRD Project.

Recent Publications

  • Mukherjee, Payel C. (2025). “Satyagraha and the Making and un-making of Gandhi’s Swaraj”. In Rethinking Satyagraha : Truth, Travel and Translation. Routledge, London and New York. pp: 143 - 160.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. (2022). “A meeting that never happened: Unheard dialogues between Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo”. In Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo. (pp. 60 - 72) Routledge, London and New York. Print.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. (2022). Familiar domesticity, unfamiliar homes: Ethnography among the homeless homemakers of Ahmedabad. In Rosa Maria Perez and Lina Fruzzetti (Eds) Trans-disciplinary Ethnography in India: Women in the Field( pp. 33 - 50). Oxon, UK & New York: Routledge. Print
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. (2021) “Cosmopolitan-nationalism, Spirituality and Spaces in Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo”, In Pragmatism, Spirituality, and Society. (pp. 285-304). Singapore Springer: Palgrave Macmillan. Print.
  • Sinha, Karishma, Paarmita, Jhalani, Aasim Khan, Payel C Mukherjee (2023) “Influencers as Institutions: Impact of digital politics in the Global South”. Global Policy 14.5: 912-924.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. "Unhomely Home, Unhomely Women: The Precariousness of Being, Belonging, and Becoming in the Sri Lankan Diasporic Fiction of Nayomi Munaweera." South Asian Review 42.3 (2021): 285 -300. .https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2020.1827928
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. "A Dissevered Nation And Her Other Self” 45.8 (2021). The Book Review. 45.8 (2021) 25-26. Print.
  • Tharakan, Koshy and Mukherjee, Payel C. (2022) “At home as an outsider: Subarnalata and Othap-pu: The scent of the other side”. Samyukta: a Journal of Gender and Culture. 7.2.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. (2019). “A Meeting that never happened: Unheard Dialogues between Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi”. Gandhi Marg Quarterly. 41 (2&3): 153-168. [ Journal paper]
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Seeking a universal knowledge space: The Idea of an Ideal University in Newman, Humboldt, Tagore”. In The Idea of a University. New Delhi: Context,Westland, 2019. Print.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. "Silent Fallibilities: Poetics of the Unspeakable in Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chughtai". Emotions, Expressions, and Aesthetics: Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi (2018). 109 - 137, Print.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C., Rath, Arnapurna, and Tharakan, Koshy. “Between Aspiration and Imag-ination: Exploring Native-Cosmopolitanism in Adib Khan’s Spiral Road and Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti”. In Madhurima Chakraborty and Umme Al- wazedi (Eds.), Postcolonial Urban Outcasts: City Margins in South Asian Literature in Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures. USA: Routledge (2017)131-149. Print.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. and Rath, Arnapurna. "Children of the Midnight in the Maximum City: Cosmopolitan Polyphony in the Bombay of Salman Rushdie and Suketu Mehta". Salman Rushdie special issue of South Asian Review, 35.1 (2014) 187-207. Published in July 2017. Print.
  • Payel C. and Rath, Arnapurna. Practicing” Cosmopolitanism in Knowledge spaces, Cityscapes, and Marketplaces.” Journal of Human Values, 21. 2 (2015) 87-98. Print. Journal
  • Mukherjee Payel C., Tharakan, Koshy & Rath, Arnapurna. "The Agora, the Dog, the Sage, and the Friend: Tracing Cosmopolitan Ancestries in the Hellenistic Regimes", Anekaant: A Journal of Polysemic Thought, 3 (2015) 71-80. Print.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. and Rath, Arnapurna. "Desire and the Déclassé: Body and Religion in Our Lady of Alice Bhatti". eDhvani: University of Hyderabad Journal of Comparative Literature. 6 (2015) 22-38. Web.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. and Rath, Arnapurna. "Reading the South Asian Woman: The Woman Who Flew by Nasreen Jahan ". The Book Review. 38.8 (2014) 376. Print.
  • Chattopadhyay, Payel. "Quest for Identity in Home and Beyond: Asian Women in Literature". The Journal of International Social Research. Spec. Issue of Women Studies 3.13 (2010) 52-57. Web.

Academic Peer-reviewed Conferences and Seminars

  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Ecological Humanism in Dialogue: Patrick Geddes and Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan”. Plenary Lecture at the 2nd International Conference on “Myths, Folklore and Landscape: Cultural Permeations in and across Scotland”. Swami Vivekananda University, West Bengal, 20-21 February, 2026.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “When Tay meets Ganga: The Scottish connection to India”; Session IV; Certificate Course in Scottish Studies, The Centre for Scottish Studies, at, Swami Vivekananda University, on 30.07.2025.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Philosophy of leaves to ideas of a University: The conversations between Patrick Geddes and Rabindranath Tagore from 1915 to 1930”. Public Seminar at The Strathmartine Trust, St Andrews, Scotland. 18 June 2025.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Tagore as an Environmentalist: Reflections on Ecological Aesthetics and Ideological Geography”. Invited talk at University College London (UCL), London, UK. 2 June 2025.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Ideas of rooted cosmopolitanism and ecological aesthetics in Tagore and Geddes”. International Conference on Scotland, India and the World: Negotiating the Transcultural Imagination, Swami Vivekananda University, West Bengal, 22-23 January, 2025.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Faith, Hope and Creative Literature : Reading Rabindranath Tagore in the present times”. International Seminar on Faith, Hope and Good Life. Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), Chennai , 6-8 January 2025.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Tagore’s Geddes: An Aesthetic Friendship and the Quest for Knowledge Spaces”, The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh 18 July 2024.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Rape, Violence, and Hyper-masculinity: The (un)holy trinity of Repre-sentation in contemporary Indian Narratives on screen”. Ethics of Representation, Forms of Resistance, and Narratives of Discomfort“. South Asian Literary Association Annual Conference, April 6-7, 2024.Virtual; via Zoom.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. Beyond those little narratives: The complex circumference of representing childhood. The South Asia International Conference on Cultures of Childhood in Contemporary South Asia, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, 14-15 December 2023.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. Myriad Voices and Fleeting Conversations: Searching for dialogues at the cusp of digital transformations. National Conference on Digital Technology and Social Change, JNU, New Delhi, 23-24th November, 2023.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C Mukherjee and Goyal, Abhishek. “Contrapuntal Histories and Collective Anxieties of Partition: India through her Political Cartoons” Envisioning Black & South Asian Solidarity: History, Culture, Praxis. April 1-2, 2023. South Asian Literary Association Annual Conference 2023. Virtual; via Zoom.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Mahatma Gandhi’s nation and his ideas on Satyagraha, Swaraj, and Culture of Sustainability”. International Conference on Sustainable Development Goals and the Gandhian Way.. Gandhian School of Democracy and Socialism, ITM University, Gwalior. 14-16 April 2023.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Disease and the Recovered Other: Into the Margins of Body and Precarity in South Asian Literature”. Reading, Writing, and Teaching South Asian Literature in a Pandemic. March 10-12, 2022 . Annual Virtual Conference via Zoom
  • Mukherjee, Payel C, David Parkinson and Kara Loy. “At Home with the Other: Exploring intercultural empathy through critical literacies”. in South Asia in the Academy:Practices, Professional Citizenship, and Intellectual Agency. Annual Conference of South Asian Literary Association (SALA) 2020 conference. January 8-9, 2020, Seattle, WA.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Satyagraha, Ashram, and Religion: The idea of Swaraj and the three philosophical matrices of Mahatma Gandhi”. International Seminar on Satyagraha in Twenty First Century. India International Center, Oct 22-24, 2019
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Othering Nationalisms in the Imagined Narratives of Nation-Building” in "Global South Cultural Production and Dialogue." 22nd international conference of Forum on Contemporary Theory,Osmania University Centre for International Programmes (Formerly American Studies Research Centre) in Hyderabad 19 - 21 December 2019.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. and Parkinson, David J. "Within Transgression and Alienation: Reading the Body across Literature in India and Canada". Canadian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (CACLALS) conference on Listening and Speaking: Post-colonial Circles of Conversation. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. June 1-3, 2019
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. and Parkinson, David J. "“Looking at the Other Mirror: A Pedagogic Intervention in Teaching Literatures across Classrooms in India and Canada”. Inclusive Peda- gogy Teaching and Learning Practices in Higher Education in India. Ashoka University, Soni- pat. 26 - 27 March, 2019.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. and Parkinson, David J. "Narrative self, Narrative other: Teaching Liter- atures across cultures in India and Canada". Heart & Souls, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada. 15 - 16 March, 2019.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. et al. Project in Collaborative teaching: Ahmedabad meets Saskatoon. EARLI SIG 4 Conference. University of Geissen, Germany. 29-31 August, 2018.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. “Unhomely Home: The Precariousness of Being, Belonging, and Be- coming,” in 2018 South Asian Literary Association (SALA) Annual Conference, New York, NY, USA. January 8-9, 2018.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. "Cosmopolitan Calibrations: Voyaging “home” in the Portuguese Bandel of the 16th century" at the International Seminar on “Philosophy and Literature Meeting: The West(s) and the East(s)” in Goa University, March 19 - 20, 2018. (Invited)
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. "Silent fallibilities: Poetics of the unspeakable in Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chughtai" in Symposium on Emotion, experience, Expression: Ethics & Aesthetics at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. 23rd April 2016. (Invited)
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. "Towards an odd kind of liberation: Rabindranath Tagore’s cosmopolitan philosophy and the literary interface" in ICPR National Seminar on Perspectives in Philoso- phy of Literature at Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi from 11-13 April 2016.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. and Rath, Arnapurna. (2014). "Emergence of the Cosmopolitan-National in Midnight's Children and Maximum City" at the 14th Annual conference of South Asian Literary Association (SALA), Chicago, Illinois, USA. January 8-9, 2014.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. and Rath, Arnapurna. (2013). ” A Counter-voice in the Carnival Square: 'Bhadramahila' in Tagore's Ghaire Baire" at the 3rd International Congress of Bengali Studies at University of Calcutta, Kolkata. November 19-22, 2013.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. and Rath, Arnapurna. (2013). "Dialogic encounters in cosmopolitan knowledge spaces". In International Conference on "Bakhtin in India: Exploring the dialogic potential in self, culture and history", organised by Central University of Gujarat, Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences Baroda and The Forum on Contemporary Theory Baroda at Gandhinagar, Gujarat. August 19-21, 2013.
  • Mukherjee, Payel C. and Rath, Arnapurna (2013). "Cloaks and Coverings: Sartorial Carnival in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone". In International Conference on Literature to Cinema, National Institute of Technology Durgapur, West Bengal. June 1-3, 2013.
  • Chattopadhyay, Payel (2009). "The women in Shaw: A study of Pygmalion". In National seminar on Contextualising the British canon: A Reading of the Twentieth Century Canonical Authors at Dept. of English, University of Burdwan, West Bengal. Feb, 2009.
  • Chattopadhyay, Payel (2008). "Rediscovering the memories: An insight into broadening consciousness and sense of freedom in The Shadow Lines. In National seminar on Multiculturalism and Literature of Asian Diaspora at Dept. of English, University of Burdwan, West Bengal. Feb, 2008.
  • Chattopadhyay, Payel (2007). "Waiting for Identity: Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake"'. In students' seminar at Dept. of English, University of Burdwan, West Bengal. May, 2007.
Last Updated : 08 Oct 2026