Department of
Humanities and Social Sciences

Pooja Sancheti has been working at IISER Pune since 2014 (2014-2020: Visiting Faculty; 2020-present: Assistant Professor) in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department. Pooja obtained her PhD in English Literature from EFLU (English and Foreign Languages University; formerly CIEFL) Hyderabad. She was a Fulbright FLTA at Stanford University from 2010-2011. At IISER Pune, she teaches courses in (English) Literature and Theory and English Language. She is involved in some interdisciplinary projects that tie the humanities with the natural sciences.  

Research

Literary Studies

Pooja’s research interests range from postmodernism and magical realism to South Asian Anglophone Literature. She is keenly interested in understanding the transition from postcolonial to transnational in contemporary South Asian Anglophone fiction, in women’s writing from this region, and in attendant issues of borders, identities, language, and conflict. Her research relies on both literary texts and critical theory. She is also an amateur Hindi/English translator and is currently working on a translation of a collection of short stories. 

English for Academic Purposes 

Pooja has been teaching English for academic and official purposes for many years and is interested in the evolving theories and practices of English for Academic Purposes. This interest is fed through her Academic Communication Skills courses as well as other long and short workshops on EAP she conducts for varied groups. She has presented her findings at ELT and EAP conferences. Inquiry in EAP cannot be divorced from practice; hence, she derives most of her data and understanding from her courses and interaction with students/ participants. She is also involved with some projects that study the intersections of language and science (pedagogy). 

Interdisciplinary Studies

Pooja is involved with a few projects (still in their nascent stage) that tie the humanities with the sciences. Primary among these are colonialism and science, language and science, and social discourses on/of science. 

Selected Publications

Selected Publications (Literary Studies)

Under Review (Feb 2021): Sancheti, Pooja. “Women, Violence, and Magical Realism in the fiction of Mohammed Hanif” at the Canadian Journal of Comparative Literature.  

Sancheti, Pooja. “Locating Ben Okri’s The Age of Magic in a Cosmopolitan Framework.” Hypercultura [Academic Journal of the Department of Letters and Foreign Languages, Hyperion University, Romania], Vol 8, 2019.  

Sancheti, Pooja. “Written and Over-written: Investigating Metafictional Strategies in Janet Frame’s The Carpathians”.  Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies (LLIDS), Issue 3.1, 2019, pp 90-109. ISSN: 2457-0044.         

Sancheti, Pooja. Translation (from Hindi into English) of select poems from Kal Sunana Mujhe by Sudama Pandey ‘Dhoomil’. Indian Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies 4.1, 2018. ISSN: 2321- 8274.

Sancheti, Pooja. “Postmodernist Poetics in Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry”. Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies (LLIDS) 1.4, pp 1-18, 2018. ISSN: 2457-0044. 

Selected Publications (Pedagogy)

Sancheti, Pooja (2019). Five teaching-learning modules on literature, language skills, and climate change for TROP-ICSU (Trans-disciplinary Research Oriented Pedagogy for Improving Climate Studies and Understanding). These modules are available online at:  https://tropicsu.org/?s=pooja+sancheti. 

Sancheti, Pooja (2017). Three learning and testing modules on Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome for the “Indian Writing in English” course, commissioned by MHRD’s NME-ICT (The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology) Swayam online portal. The modules are available online at: <https://swayam.gov.in/courses/5748-indian-writing-in-english>