About the Discover Winter School in Gender Studies

The Discover Winter School in Gender Studies presents a two-week virtual course designed for high school students, to acquaint them with the foundational concepts and arguments within gender studies. The program strives to promote critical thinking in the assessment of gendered frameworks in domains including international relations, economics, film studies, and more, cultivating an atmosphere of scholarly advancement centered around diverse facets of gender in South Asian contexts.
All participants will be offered a certificate of completion at the end of the program, and will be provided the opportunity to connect with fellow participants to foster further discussion.

Questions You May Have

The Winter School will be held from the 1st to the 10th of December, and sessions will be scheduled between 5-7 pm IST on each day. All sessions are virtual.

The program will be split into ten 2-hour sessions over the course of two weeks, with one session held every alternate day, accompanied by short quizzes, tutorial discussions, and presentations.

Highlights from Winter School 2023

Meet the Faculty

Tarika Khattar

is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Cambridge. Her research explores the evolution of the Kashmir conflict during the Cold War. Her teaching and research interests lie in three main areas: global anti-imperialism, postcolonial state-building, and the interplay between the national and the international, particularly the impact of domestic politics on foreign policy. Tarika holds a BA in History with Honours from the University of Chicago and an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge.

Louise Courbin

is a PhD Candidate in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Her current research focuses on the production and reproduction of knowledge within academia and political institutions in France since 1962. Her research interests combine critical theorisation of knowledge, comparative study of peace and conflict strategies, border conflict and cooperation, and the (re)production of narratives in academic and political institutions. She graduated Sciences app Strasbourg with a BA in Political and International Affairs, and two MAs in Border Studies, and in International and European Studies.

Nasema Zeerak

is a doctoral student in International Policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. Her educational background includes an MSc. in Conflict Management and Resolution from the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego, as well as a Master of Public Administration from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Her research interests include anti-colonial and anti-imperial thought, international relations theory, the politics of knowledge production, and political violence. An overarching theme that drives her current research is the ways that coloniality and power are silenced and disavowed in processes of knowledge production. Exploring how such political erasure impacts how people live and understand political violence is what interests her majorly.

Dhouha Djerbi

is a PhD researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute and an affiliate with its Gender Centre. She has a Master of Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin (cum laude) and a B.A. in Gender, Sexuality and Society and Psychology (summa cum laude). Dhouha is currently affiliated with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Centre for Maghreb Studies in Tunis as a research fellow. Dhouha’s research explores gendered labour relations with the context of agrarian transformations and rural movements in postrevolutionary Tunisia. Her focus encompasses feminized and embodied labour, social reproduction, and the shifts in the gendered division of labour in contentious contexts. Her research methodology is deeply rooted in ethnographic principles, often involving hands-on experiences working on various farms across diverse regions of Tunisia.

Q Manivannan

is the Head of Discover and an ESRC Fellow, Associate Fellow of the HEA, and a doctoral researcher at the University of St Andrews. Their research studies the conditions in which care-based political movements in India can sustain. Q has previously worked on disability inclusion with the United Nations ESCAP, in leadership roles with multiple research centers in New Delhi, and graduated Trinity College Dublin with an MPhil in International Peace Studies, where they received the James O’ Haire Prize.

About the Course

The Winter School in Gender Studies will consist of 5 lectures, interspersed by workshops and interactive exercises with the workshop leaders and the Discover team to critically engage with gender in our everyday lives. 

Session by: Q Manivannan, University of St Andrews

Why is it important to study and have a critical understanding of gender in our everyday lives? How does it manifest in politics, market economies, households, conflict zones, international organisations, governments, and knowledge systems? This lecture will introduce you to key theories and concepts in Gender Studies, from questions of history and biology to a reimagination of the gender binary. It engages with historical debates in gender and sexuality, and reviews academic discourses surrounding intersectionality, culture wars, caste, religion, economics, and politics. The lecture will question modern pop culture discourses on gender and trans inclusion, alongside reviewing cases of women and queer rights movements across the past decades (and centuries, even)! From Judith Butler to Andrea Dworkin, and Gayatri Spivak to Ratna Kapur, we will attempt to question what it means to live embodied lives, and how care, joy, and grief have accompanied questions of gender across space and time.

Participants lauded the Discover Winter School for its impactful sessions and the caliber of its mentors. One participant shared, “I learned about topics such as the care economy and social reproduction that I was not aware of previously. Throughout all of these lectures, I did not stop making notes. I genuinely am a fan of each of the mentors whose lecture I was able to attend.” Another participant commented, “My experience with the Discover Winter School was exhilarating. The sessions were robust with such scholarly expertise and guidance, and I’m so glad that we got to interact with the mentors!”

Contact Us

discover@essai.in 


In case of escalations, please contact
q@essai.in

If you are an academic who is interested in mentoring students with us, please refer to the recruitment page here.