Vidyasagar Sharma

Academic education

Apr 2023 – today
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Social Anthropology, Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology, Bielefeld University, Germany
Dissertation (working title): Reading as Resistance: Study Circles and the Everyday Politics of Belonging on a University Campus in India
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka
Co-supervisor: Prof. Dr. Minh Nguyen

2021-08 - 2022-05
Urban Fellows Programme, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru, India

2018-10 - 2021-02
Master of Philosophy in Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi
MPhil Dissertation: Changing Contours of Caste in Urban Spaces: A Case Study of Delhi
Supervisor: Prof. N. Sukumar

2015-07 - 2017-07
Master of Arts (major in Political Science), Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

2011-07 - 2014-06
Bachelor of Arts (Major in Political Science), Faculty of Social Sciences, Indira Gandhi National Open University, India

Awards and honours

2019-07 - 2023-03
Junior Research Fellowship, University Grants Commission, India

2015-07 - 2016-07
Nirman Foundation Fellowship, Centre for Policy Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

Research experience

2023-04 - today
Research Associate in the DFG project "Navigating Universities. Student Aspirations, Boundaries and Transformations in India and the Philippines" (Navigating Universities) - Project management: Prof. Dr em. Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka

2022-04 - 2022-06
Research Intern at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India

2022-01 - 2022-03
Worked as a Principal Investigator in an Independent Project "Space, Belonging and Everyday Learning Experiences: A Case Study of Indian Institute for Human Settlements" at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, India
Project Supervisor: Dr Gautam Bhan

Memberships

2023-01 - 2024-01
Member of the British Sociological Association, UK
2025 - today
Nachwuchsgruppe der DGA and the Arbeitskreis Neuzeitliches Südasien (Asian Studies)
2024-07-20 - today
European Conference for South Asian Studies (South Asia Institute)

Organisation
2021-07 - today
I have founded an academic initiative, Speaking From Margin, to engage with contemporary discourses in the social sciences. It seeks to build academic solidarity for social justice in higher education. We use this initiative to strengthen solidarity between researchers from different marginalised fields and to engage with the evolving knowledge paradigm of the social sciences.

Languages
Hindi (mother tongue); English (fluent); German (learning); Bhojpuri (mother dialect)

Research areas
— Belonging and Spatial Identity in Higher Education
— Anthropology of Reading Culture and Critical Pedagogy
— Ethnographic Methods and Subaltern Knowledge History
— Urban Marginality and Institutional Access
— Student Movements and Everyday Resistance

Fieldwork experience
Fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork (February 2024 - April 2025) at a premier public university in Delhi, India.