All Fellows

Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha

Professor of Literary Studies, Kazi Nazrul University, India, and (currently) Institute of Language Studies and Research (ILSR), Kolkata, India

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

October/November 2022; June 2026

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

»Transnational Aesthetics of Democracy«

Project outline:

This project looks into the intersections of democracy and transnational experiences of aesthetic orders, aesthetic actions, and aesthetic objects. Going beyond exclusive Europhonic models and theorization of liberal democracy and aesthetic regimes, this project widens the canvas to understand the cross-cultural and transnational understanding of suturing the aesthetic and the democratic, inquiring how our aesthetic principles and practices deepen the democratic agenda of pluriversal co-existence. It also investigates how this mingling of the aesthetic and the democratic across different cultural and territorial contexts have helped in the transformation of canonical ideas and established notions about social relations and political power. (Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha)

Research partner:

Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha follows the invitation of Johannes Voelz, professor of American Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. In 2022, his stay was funded by the Frankfurt research initiative »ConTrust – Trust in Conflict. Political Life under Conditions of Uncertainty«. In 2026, his stay is funded by the Research Training Group »Aesthetics of Democracy«.

Scholarly profile of Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha

Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha, currently with School of Translation and Cultural Studies, Institute of Language Studies and Research (ILSR), Kolkata, has been Professor of English at Kazi Nazrul University since 2017. Previously he taught at Sidho Kanho Birsha University, West Bengal and Central University of Odisha, India. His current research focuses on Critical Theory, literary and cultural representations and postcolonial interventions from the Global South. He looks into recent ideas of decoloniality, public humanities and literary and cultural articulation of interfaith relations.

Website:
Please find more information about Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha here and here.

Selected publications:

»Convivial Epistemes: Pedagogies of Enmity and Performatives of Postcolonial Cohesion«, in: Mario Novelli (ed.), The Geopolitics of Education in Conflict-Affected Contexts Understanding International Assistance and Intervention, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2026.
»Literature and the Counterpublics: Restoring the Archive of Sahajiya Sahitya«, in: Public Humanities, special issue on Global Literary Humanities, Cambridge University Press 2025.
(with Subhendra Bhowmick), »Towards Deconstructive Rationality: Pathologies of Reason and Immanentist Counter-discourses«, in: Soumyajit Patra and Tatwamasi Paltasingh (eds.), Sociology of Rationality: Critiques and Creative Conversations, Routledge, Taylor and Francis group 2025.
»Critique in Dark Times: Centenary of Frankfurt School Critical Theory and its Global Relevance«, in: Economic and Political Weekly (EPW Engage) 60, 21 (May 24, 2025).
(ed. with Saswat Samay Das), Deleuze and Guattari and Terror, Edinburgh University Press 2022.

Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha

Scholarly profile of Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha

Information cookies