ProfMeena Dhanda

Starting from personal identity in the philosophy of Charles Taylor, Bernard Williams and Richard Rorty, Meena has explored the difficulty of conceptualising Dalit identity. Her research has included issues in feminist philosophy, especially, gender quotas, crimes in the name of honour, cultural politics of the veil, ethics of sex-selection and surrogacy. The subjects of her trans-disciplinary publications using qualitative research include runaway marriages and casteism amongst Punjabis. She has led funded research projects on caste discrimination in Britain, particularly focusing on caste prejudice and the link between casteism and racism. Amongst theorists on anti-racism, anti-casteism and anti-sexism she has interest in the writings of Ambedkar, Beauvoir, Fanon, Sartre, Young, and others. She has supervised an EU Horizon2020 MSCA postdoctoral fellowship project on Periyar. She is engaged as a supervisor in the EU Horizon2020 International Training Network FEINART for supervision of Early Stage Researchers from several countries doing doctoral work on socially engaged art. She is currently co-editing the Routledge Handbook of Punjab Studies, and writing Caste: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press).