Malabika Sarkar is the Vice Chancellor of Ashoka University. She is Professor of English at Ashoka University. She joined Ashoka University as Principal Academic Advisor in 2015 and took on the additional role of Ashoka’s first Dean of Faculty and Research in 2016. In these two concurrent roles, she has been responsible for faculty recruitment across the university and the creation of Ashoka’s faculty governance policies, including the tenure process.
She initiated the Natural Sciences Programme at Ashoka and led a distinguished group of science advisors in envisioning this programme, overseeing the recruitment of the first faculty in Physics and Biology and supervising the building of infrastructural facilities. Most recently, she initiated the Chemistry Programme.
Professor Sarkar has also instituted Ashoka’s Ph.D. Programme, created a Research Office, and took the first steps towards creating a university-wide research database.
Before coming to Ashoka, she was the First Vice-Chancellor of Presidency University in Kolkata (from 2011-2014), where she was responsible for moulding the iconic Presidency College into a University. Prior to that, at Jadavpur University, she was Professor and Head of Department of English, a member of the University Council at a critical point in its history, and a crucial part of many academic committees of the university.
She was also a member of the University Grants Panel of Experts in English and Foreign Languages, a panel member of NAAC, and panelist and speaker at many Higher Education conventions across India. An alumna of Cambridge University, she was later Visiting Fellow and now elected Life Member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge. She is an invited Fellow of the English Association (FEA), UK.
Her many publications include Cosmos and Character in Paradise Lost (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Moneta’s Veil: Essays on the Nineteenth Century (Pearson-Longman, 2009) . Her most recent publication is a chapter on the poetry of Yeats and Kipling in a multi-author book published by Routledge in July 2019.
Her own field of academic interest is Early Modern Literature, the History of Science, and Romantic Literature (particularly Milton). She is the founder President of the Centre for Studies in Romantic Literature and continues to direct its international conferences. She is also on the International Advisory Board of European Romantic Review published by Routledge.
Deeply interested in women’s welfare and the education of underprivileged children, she is currently the President of the Women’s Coordinating Council (WCC), founded in 1960, the apex body in the State of West Bengal with 74 affiliated NGOs.
