Role: Associate Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Mumbai, India

  Contact: nishimitra@tiss.edu

  Research Interests:
Feminist Theorizing in India | Research Methodologist and Practices | Women in Academia | Sexual Violence against Women | Feminist Peace and Justice Studies

Nishi is a trained Social Cultural Anthropologist, presently working as an Associate Professor in the Advanced Centre for Women's Studies, at the School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. She has led several research and intervention related initiatives like the Best Practices among Responses to Violence against Women: a study involving an assessment of state and community based interventions on the issue of domestic violence in India; Gender Planning Training Project for sensitizing senior police officers in India to issues of violence against women and to develop appropriate skills in sensitive and effective handling of women victims of violence; Marital Violence: A Feminist Understanding of Violence in Intimate Relations which is her doctoral research work that explores the erotic aspects of violence and its normalization as part of living femininity and masculinity which paradoxically demonstrates the changing subjective positions of the victim and the victimizer ; and Sexual Violence and Rape in Marriage : A study based on interviews and case studies of 100 women from counseling cells with the objective of advocating for a social and legal response to the unrecognized problem of marital rape in India.

She has also led several international research partnerships with academics from Brazil and South Africa, USA and UK. A partnership she led with four UK Universities: London Metropolitan University, University of York, University of Warwick; and the University of Bristol promoted and strengthened cross-cultural teaching, research and extension in the area of women's issues and gender studies in her Institute. The three country partnership between India, Brazil and South Africa is an attempt to theorize from lived experiences of women from the South in their roles as mothers and academics and power and powerlessness in homes and in Academia.