Hia Sen

Assistant Professor

BA Sociology (Presidency College, 2005)

MA Sociology (Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2007)

M.Phil Sociology (Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2009)

PhD. Sociology (Albert-Ludwigs Universität, Freiburg, 2012)

My doctoral work at the Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg was on exploring a middle class culture of childhood in West Bengal through narratives by children themselves and on extending the concept of childhood as a Bildungsmoratorium which had limited use in the German academia. I completed my PhD. as an Erasmus Mundus scholar in 2012. In October 2012 I joined the Department of Sociology at Presidency University as an Assistant Professor.

My research is in the area of the Sociology of Childhood. I am currently working on how childhood is "performed" in theatre by child and non child actors. I am also interested in historically researching children's experiences. My doctoral work was on how the imagination of childhood as a 'time out' from adulthood relates to the lived experiences of childhood among the middle classes. I am also interested in exploring childhood as Bildungsmoratoria in other socio-historical contexts in India and in the experiences of growing up and its self-images before economic liberalization. I am the convener of the University Annual Report Committee from 2014. I was  joint convener of the University GenED Programme from 2015-2018.

I am currently teaching a postgraduate course on the Sociology of Childhood. The course introduces students to the main conceptual debates on childhood within the discipline from the 1990s. By looking at sources from varied contexts, it also acquaints students with the historical background in the South Asian context within which childhood acquired legislative, racial and other other significant meanings. The course was primarily aimed to urge students to look at other subdisciplines of Sociology from the lens of childhood. The undergraduate course I teach this semester is on Qualitative Research Methods. In addition to teaching students the various methods and theoretical debates around them, I also teach them to transcribe interviews and conversations. Throughout the semester, undergraduates are encouraged to try different methods and also write and discuss questions of identity, demeanour, existing social skills and how they can be deployed for research.

In teh alternate semester I teach a postgraduate course on Kinship in which earlier anthropological theories about Kinship are explored, in addition to the reconfiguration of concepts of kinship in contemporary Sociology  following shifts in assisted reproduction technology, political crises, shifting notions about race, space, belonging etc .

I am also teaching a course on the Frankfurt School where students are introduced to  some of the key arguments by Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Georg Marcuse and Walter Benjamin.

I also teach courses on Globalization and Indian society to postgraduate students and an optional course on the Sociology of childhood.

I have supervised over 50 postgraduate students working on: childhood, labour, creative industries, chronological age, urban neighbourhoods, trades, clubs and queer associations.

I am curently supervising one PhD student working on the homestay industry on the Cinchona plantation in Kalimpong. 

Member of the Society for the History of Children and Youth from 2019

Books

Sen, H. (2013). 'Time-Out' in the Land of Apu: Childhoods, Bildungsmoratorium and the Middle Classes of Urban West Bengal, Berlin. Springer, Vs Verlag Für Sozialwissenschaften.

Journal Article 

2025 - Voyaging into a Christian World: Indian children and the Church Missionary Society’s project of world-making, 1920s–1940s. Journal of Global History. Published online 2025:1-19. 

2022 - Childhood, Youth, and Identity: A Roundtable Conversation  
From the Global South, (coauthored with Kannan, D., Dar, A., Duff, S., Sen, H., Nag, S., and Bergere, C.), Journal of Childhood Studies, 47(2): 20-31.

2020   ‘Producing’ Childhood: The making of childhood and children in theatre’, Childhood, vol. 28, no. 1: 72-85.

 2020  Book Review, Jill Sperandio, ‘Pioneering Education for Girls Across the Globe: Advocates and Entrepreneurs, 1742–1910’, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 2020, 13 (3): pp. 483-485.Sen, H.

2014 - From Rabindra Sangit to Doraemon: Inheritance and Globalisation of Children’s Leisure Culture in Kolkata. In ASIEN:Vol. 130. 24-41.

Article in Edited Volumes

Sen, H (2021)  Bengali daughter, Bengali Child: The roles and routes to understanding childhood, In Perez, R. and Fruzzeti, L. (eds). Transdisciplinary Ethnography in India, London: Routledge.Sen, H (2018) “Chasing Pareto” In Chaudhuri, M & Thakur M. (eds) Doing Theory: Locations, Hierarchies and Disjunctions, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.

Sen, H. (2016): Do the Mollycoddled Act? Children, Agency and disciplinary Entanglements in India In: Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood. New Perspectives in Childhood Studies, Eds, Esser, F., Baader, M., Betz, T. & Hungerland, B. London: Routledge, 197-210.

Sen, H. (2015): Halcyon Days ? Bengali Middle Class Childoods and tale of Transformation In :Changing India: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Ed. Saalmann, G. New Delhi: Winshield Press.

Sen, H. (2013):Koloniale Soziale Arbeit: Die Thematisierung der Kindheit in Indien: In, “Weltatlas„ Soziale Arbeit – jenseits aller Vermessung, Eds, Homfeldt, H.G., Bähr, C., Schröder, C., Schröer, W., & Schweppe, C. (Ed):, Weinheim/München: BELTZ Juventa, 182-197.

Book Reviews in Newspaper

May  2022                   ‘Iridescent Yarn’, Review of “A Venetian At The Mughal Court: The Life and Adventures of Nicolo Manucci” by Marco Moneta, (New Delhi: Vintage), The Telegraph, India.

January 2022               ‘An Ark for the Deluge’, Review of  “Diary of a Young   Naturalist” by Dara McAnulty, (London: Penguin Random House), The Telegraph, India.

June 2021                    ‘Library and Afterlife’, Review of “The Paris Library” by Janet Skeslien Charles, (London: Two Roads), The Telegraph, India.

January 2021               ‘Fluid Forms’, Review of “The Death of Vivek Oji” by Akwaeke Emezi (London: Faber and Faber), The Telegraph, India.

September 2020           ‘Getting under the City’s Skin’, Review of “Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi” by Amita Baviskar (New Delhi: Sage), The Telegraph, India.

November 2019          ‘A Glimpse of Distinct Themes in a Vast, Woven Carpet’, Review of “Socioliterary Cultures in South Asia” by Anisur Rahman (New Delhi: Niyogi Books), The Telegraph, India.

Review of Anisur Rahman's Socioliterary Cultures in South Asia, The Telegraph, India, November 2019.

“Everyday Anxieties”, Review of Mahima Nayar’s Against All Odds: Psychosocial Distress and Healing among Women, The Telegraph, India, 22 June 2019.

“Life Beyond Pity and Shame”, Review of Sohaila Abdulali’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, The Telegraph, India, 29 March 2019.

“No Azaadi for Dalit Agricultural Labourers”, Review of Anand Chakravarti’s Is this ‘Azaadi’? Everyday lives of Dalit agricultural labourers in a Bihar village, The Telegraph, India, 2 November 2018.

"Lens refocused", Review of Maitrayee Chaudhuri’s Refashioning India: Gender, Media and a Transformed Public Discourse, The Telegraph, India, 19 January 2018.

"Stoic Faces of Survival", Review of Kota Neelima’s Widows of Vidarbha: Making of Shadows, The Telegraph, Kolkata, 11 May 2018.