The past few decades have been marked by growing awareness about the need to move beyond Anglocentric/Eurocentric epistemes, to instead engage in intellectual projects that effectively (re)present the voices and consciousness of marginalized populations (Manion & Shah, 2019). The term decolonizing research methodologies has thus come to acquire a central place within feminist research in the field of Comparative and International Education (CIE), with rallying calls to foreground the complexities and uniqueness of female participants lived realities through non-hierarchical, non-categorical, and non-dichotomous modes of meaning-making (Lugones, 2010). However, methodological literature on decolonizing feminist research is largely linked to the data collection phase, with limited engagement with how to effectively analyze data once it is collected. This study demonstrates the potential use of “positioning theory”, a form of discourse analysis, as a decolonial analytical framework to investigate the micro details of a female school teachers’ experiences with caregiving during COVID-19 in India. The analysis revealed the shifting, often contextual nature of the identities that the participant claimed for herself throughout the narrative, such as a pampered daughter, critical observer, adjusting daughter-in-law, guilty mother, strategic choice maker, and so on.  Positioning theory thus helped problematize the tendency to essentialize women’s experiences and identities by drawing attention to the multiple, sometimes contradictory identities that they claim for themselves, a complexity that is often neglected within feminist research because of its messiness and lack of amenability to generalization.

Despite having one of the largest and fastest-growing post-secondary sectors in the world, there has been increasing protest against the lack of academic freedom within HEIs in India in the past decade. This research study carries out a comparative analysis of academic freedom within HEIs in India and the U.S., with a specific focus on how the notion is formulated within key policy documents and the provisions to safeguard it. Preliminary data from the systematic review revealed that while policy documents within both the countries frame the notion along similar lines, various sections within the Indian Penal Code are used to criminalize useful dissent and freedom of expression within HEIs. The study recommends that in order to safeguard academic freedom in India, certain specific sections within the Indian Penal Code (Section 124A, Section-153A, Section-292, Section-295A) should be either repealed or reformulated so that they are not amenable to misuse by the government.

Despite the central role played by faculty within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in addressing Gender -Based Violence (GBV), their experiences have received limited attention, especially in the context of HEIs within South Asia. The study seeks to fill this research gap by exploring teaching faculty’s (n=10) experiences with addressing GBV in a public HEI in Delhi (India) through the use of narrative inquiry. Narrative inquiry was chosen because it is participant-led, open ended, and collaborative; thereby providing more space for the faculty to share their experiences when dealing with GBV. Analysis of data from a pilot interview conducted with a senior female faculty member revealed that female victims typically refuse to lodge a formal complaint due to the fear of social stigma, and advocacy for victims of GBV by the faculty in the absence of institutional support tends to take a psychological toll on them. In addition, safeguarding the college’s reputation is a key concern for the organization, which often dissuades victims from coming forward. The preliminary findings highlight the need for greater institutional support to enable the faculty to advocate for GBV, as well as the nexus between the gendered social structure and institutional/personal responses to GBV. It also draws attention to the need to include the voices of diverse faculty members who have dealt with cases where boys were victims of GBV as my study goes forward to develop a more holistic understanding of how gendered social structures inflict violence on both women and men.