Academic Socialisation of Doctoral Students In Kashmir: Exploring Gendered Entanglements in a Politically Contested Context

ESRC DTP Scholar: S. Arokia Mary, Education Studies

Supervisor(s): Dr Emily Henderson, Associate Professor, Education Studies and Dr Khursheed Wadia, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology

Academic socialisation is the developmental process through which doctoral students acquire 'values, skills, attitudes, norms and knowledge for membership in a given society '. The existing literature lists participation in scholarly activities, student-faculty-peer interactions, supportive faculty environment, formal and informal mentoring, collegiality, and scholarly encouragement as determinants of academic socialisation. Recently scholars have critiqued academic socialisation's universalising, Western-oriented linear theoretical frameworks, which overlook individuals' gendered and context-specific realities.

Targeted growth in enrollment of previously under-represented students in higher degrees in India requires research on graduate education. However, research studies on doctoral education in India and the global south are scarce. There exists a recognised need for quality enhancement and context-informed (across intersections of caste, class and gender) research on doctoral education. Further, caste and gender-based discrimination/ harassment from marginalised castes, gender and religious minorities have been reported.

Kashmir has been selected as the site for its unique historical, demographic and political context. Political contestations account for the physical destruction of infrastructure, strikes, shelling, curfews and restrictions. It also led to a large-scale brain drain. Rapid depreciation of quality education due to the isolation of academia from the outside world, violence against academics, lack of academic freedom and autonomy, and distortion of the research environment shape the doctoral experiences and socialisation of students. The literature on women's higher education participation in Kashmir (a Muslim-majority region) essentially provides various percentages, trends in enrolment, barriers to higher education and a concise list of socioeconomic, political and cultural factors and government schemes responsible for the represented percentages and aggregates. The diversity in lived realities of women who access higher education rarely gets captured. Given this context, the overarching research question is: What constitutes academic socialisation of doctoral students in Kashmir, India, and how is it gendered?

An exploratory, longitudinal, qualitative case study approach of two universities will be employed. The first phase will be semi-structured interviews with 30 participants, corroborating data with existing sources and inputs from a few key stakeholders. Subsequently, participants will be enabled to keep a diary (longitudinal, semi-structured) to engage with their everyday experiences of socialisation-finally, the second round of semi-structured interviews to discuss and develop insights gained from the diary.

Thus, the study will further the contemporary inquiry on academic socialisation at several levels. Firstly, as a contribution to doctoral education research from global south scholars; secondly, contributing a research perspective to ongoing policy and institutional work on higher education equity in India; thirdly, exploring the gendered realities of academic socialisation on doctoral experiences, progress, completion, and aspirations; fourthly specifically focusing on the politically contested and socially conservative context of Kashmir, India. This study will offer local and global applicability, challenging the limited framework of homogenised Muslim identities (across the intersections of gender, caste and class) and cultural norms that often clash with western democratic values and systems.