Greetings from the Women Studies Centre!

I am pleased to announce that Women Studies Center has just begun to sprout. Granted by the University Grants Commission, New Delhi in 2009, the center started to initiate dialogue about gender issues from January 2010. We have successfully organized a few discussions on issues of caste and gender, women’s education and engendering curriculum, communalism and women’s issues, gender and morality, pro-feminist men etc. Mr. Derek Hooper, one of the consultants with the UK government on gender equality inaugurated the center on 8th March 2010. In his inaugural speech Mr. Hooper outlined what constitutes safer and democratic public spaces from gender perspective. He touched upon politics of public spaces and institutions and how they sustain inequalities. Hooper also suggested ways to contest and question such subtle and not so-subtle oppressions and discriminations.

The center is commencing an interdisciplinary certificate course on women studies. I am pleased to invite all to join this course and contribute towards social change as writers, consultants, legal experts, social workers, artists. We are also inviting applicants from Science and other professional fields to join the course. The minimum qualification for the course is graduation. Further details are provided in the English and Marathi brochures on the university website.

Dr. Pushpesh Kumar
Director