Simple Rajrah

Introduction

I am presently a third-year doctoral candidate in politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. My work is situated at the intersection of the history of political thought and feminist political theory, focusing on the intellectual history of anti-caste feminist movements in India. I have teaching experience in feminist theory, theory of politics and modern political thought.

Research

My doctoral thesis, Reclaiming Resistance: Perspectives on the History of Dalit and Bahujan Women’s Political Thought 1942-1995 develops the first detailed intellectual history of the lower-caste feminist movement in India. Employing a diverse archive of conference reports, magazines, political speeches and oral histories, I recover four significant yet historically forgotten moments of political articulation and organisational momentum by Dalit and Bahujan women between the 1940s and 2000s. Each of these moments of broadly activist, historiographical, literary, and organisational interventions aids the development of an alternate feminist thought in India, one that substantially differs from mainstream upper-caste feminist thought in its commitment to annihilate both caste and gender as systems of oppression. The thesis also recovers several forgotten and under-appreciated historical actors whose complex anti-caste feminism enriches key debates in feminist philosophy and the history of feminist thought on domesticity, solidarity and feminist activism.

My MPhil thesis supervised by Professor Elizabeth Frazer at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, explored a political understanding of loneliness. I analysed how loneliness has been studied historically in political theory, particularly by contrasting and comparing canonical works in classical political theory and existentialist tradition. My thesis interrogated the relationship between loneliness and politics at three levels – the macro-logical level in the enumeration of social contract, at the structural level in the effects of systemic oppression and at the affective level which unites individual to the psychic to the social to the political.

I previously hold a postgraduate degree in Politics with a Specialisation in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University Delhi and an undergraduate degree in B.A (Hons) Political Science, from the University of Delhi, both of which I again graduated with distinction. I also completed certificate courses in International political economy and Global energy politics from Kings College London.

Engagements:

Beyond my DPhil, I am a Sub-Dean at Magdalen College and President of Oxford South Asian Society. Earlier, I co-organised the Oxford Workshop on Work in Progress in Political Theory (OWIPT).In addition, I was a member of the Oxford South Asian Ambedkar Forum, a student-led platform for discussing caste and inequality, especially in academia. We organised two significant conferences, Counting Caste: Breaking the Caste Deadlock in 2022 and Caste Beyond South Asia: Diaspora and the Internet in 2023. I have presented my work at various conferences including Association of Asian Studies Conference Seattle 2024, Edinburgh-St Andrews Joint Graduate Conference in Political Theory 2023, South Asia in Transformative Times Conference, Dublin University 2023, and the Oxford Political Theory Graduate Conference 2021.

Teaching:

Feminist Theory

Theory of Politics

Social Change and Political Protest