I work in both fields of Sociology and History of Childhood. My doctoral research was on ideas of childhood and how they translated into the lived experiences of children among the middle classes in contemporary Bengal, developing the concept of childhood as a Bildungsmoratorium used by the educationist Jürgen Zinnecker.
I am currently working on transracial and transcultural encounters between children in India and missionaries and other "travellers" from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. The sources, I explored so far, are books, reports and periodicals from the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS). I am looking in particular at accounts of children in missionary and travel writings, my larger interests are in identifying the accounts, images and voices of children in archives and in reading them in the context of larger projects of knowledge production.
In 2017 I completed an ICSSR funded project "Performing Childhood, Performing Children: Childhood and Indian Theatre" in which I explore how actors, perform age roles on stage. Though my current work has been directly towards a historical approach, it inflects and feeds into my continuing interest in studying contemporary childhoods and ways of conceptualising them. I am interested in developing questions about acting and acting skills to theoretically contribute to debates about childhood.
I currently teach an undergraduate course on Qualitative research Method and a postgraduate course Sociology of Childhood. I also teach a compulsory undergraduate course on Frankfurt School Thinkers, a postgraduate course on Kinship as well as an optional course on Globalisation and Indian Society. Till 2018 I have cotaught a GenEd course called "Love" for undergraduate students from disciplines other than Sociology. From 2019 the genEd courses I co-teach are on Indian Society:Issues and Images and Family and intimacy.
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)
I am currently exploring the various accounts produced of children in South Asia in nineteenth century missionary and travel writing to explore how transracial encounters can be read through the lens of age. The attempt to locate archival sources is ongoing. I have been working on missionary documentation of transracial encounters with native children in India, particularly in the regions of Bengal, Chhotanagpur and Bihar. The sources, I explored so far, are publications from the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS), particularly the collection of periodicals and annual reports.
In 2019 I began preliminary fieldwork on children’s leisure practices in Kolkata. Empirically, the work intends to understand linkages between urban spaces, class, the informal sector, and emerging practices in working class families around children. A primary concern also is to see if the optic of class is useful to study children’s lives
My last externally funded project explored ideas and techniques used by actors, directors and writers to portray childhood in theatre. My ICSSR funded project "Performing Childhood, Performing Children: Childhood and Indian Theatre" was completed in 2017.
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 am joint convener of the University GenED Programme from 2015.
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 am interested in supervising students working on the Sociology of childhood, particularly on the everyday lives of children, transcultural circulation of concepts about childhood and methods related to researching childhood.
Apart from that I am interested in supervising students who want to work on the themes of kinship, transcultural mobilities and labour.
I am curently supervising one PhD student working on children's use and understanding of power in a primary school settin, and another student working on informal labour in Kolkata.
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
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 (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
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.
Presidency University Students Corner