Extension and Research Activities

Research Cell

The college has a Research Cell constituting of the Principal, five faculty members and a body of external advisors. The committee looks after the following aspects of research related activities :

  • Providing information to the faculty members of the college by posting updates regarding workshops, seminars, conferences, call for papers, refresher courses, orientation programmes, summer and winter schools, short-term courses etc.
  • Guiding/facilitating applications for research grants where needed.
  • Providing information and maintaining a database regarding possible sources of funding, fellowships, grants etc.
  • Helping and encouraging students to involve themselves in research related activities like wall magazines, debates, projects etc.
  • Organizing round-tables chaired by external advisors/experts the committee also intends to motivate faculty members to pursue research.
  • Developing resources for and managing the activities of the Research and Resource Centre on the 'Women Missionaries of the Ramakrishna Orders'.
  • Expanding the already existing Gender Resource Corner into a full-fledged Gender Resource Centre.
  • Managing the shared resources/equipment pool formed from completed MRP projects (as per UGC norms)
  • The Research Cell is also working on the publication of a social sciences and humanities research journal, the RKSMVV Journal of Human Sciences.

The Research Cell board :
Dr. Gargi Gangopadhyay
Dr. Bidisha Chatterjee
Payal Bose Biswas

 

RKSMVV Journal of Human Sciences

A multi-disciplinary peer-reviewed research journal, the RKSMVV Journal of Human Sciences is being published from the College. The editorial board and members, who are in charge of the publication of the journal, are guided and helped by a body of external advisors.

Editorial board :
Payal Bose Biswas
Dr. Bidisha Chatterjee
Dr. Gargi Gangopadhyay

Members :
Rohini Dharmapal
Dr. Saberi Rakshit

External Advisors :
Dr. Siuli Sarkar, Principal, Lady Brabourne College.
Dr. Pradip Basu, Professor & Head, Department of Political Science, Presidency University.
Dr. Madhuchhanda Mitra, Professor, English Department, St John's University-College of St Benedict, Collegeville, MN, USA.
 

"Women Missionaries of the Ramakrishna Orders": A Research and Resource Centre

Ramakrishna Sarada Mission Vivekananda Vidyabhavan has initiated a Research and Resource Centre on "The Women Missionaries of the Ramakrishna Orders". This will be a unique consortium of published books and periodicals, e-resources and digital and hard copies of archival materials for instance, letters, manuscripts, photographs, paintings and films.

We feel that such a Research and Resource Centre on "The Women Missionaries of the Ramakrishna Orders" will be extremely relevant as this aims to fill a gap in the history of Indian missionary work by attracting archival and academic attention to the vast field of work carried out by the women missionaries of the Ramakrishna orders in India and abroad. Compared to the critical research work existing in the corresponding fields of women missionaries, for instance for that of the Christian women missionaries or the Brahmo reformation and the women associated with it, critical research on the women missionaries of the Ramakrishna Movement has remained a comparatively less investigated area of study.

In this context, and in the context of the ever growing demand of digital archiving in every field of study today, our initiative has a two-fold focus - on building a collaborative resource center that would in turn encourage and generate academic research in the area.

The Resource Centre aims to bring together all primary and secondary work relevant to this area under a single umbrella. It aims to produce an integrated annotated catalogue of archival resource materials in the possession of other public or private institutions. On this account we will seek active collaboration from our mother and sister organizations like Sri Sarada Math and Sister Nivedita Girls' School.

The Research Centre is planned as an inclusive one and is not only limited to the college faculty. Outside participants are welcome to be part of the project as collaborators in building the archival contents and as researchers using its resources for academic purposes. This little explored domain provides a rich and rewarding field of critical inquiry, that apart form religious, theological and missionary perspectives also intersects with fields such as Gender Studies, Studies in travel and travel writing, Socio-economic impact, Rural/Area studies and Visual cultures to name only a few.
 

Gender Resource Centre

. The Research Cell of the College has recently expanded the existing Gender Resource Corner in the Library into a full-fledged Gender Resource Centre. This is a multidisciplinary nodal platform having a practical as well as a disciplinary approach. Its goal is to work towards creating responsible, confident and empowered women.

The Centre organizes lectures, meets, workshops for gender sensitization and to help students tackle social problems if any. Activities like Workshops on Legal Rights, Sexual Violence at the Workplace, Self Defence and Child Sexual Abuse that have been arranged with the help of organizations like Talash and Rahi as well as with the help from experts and activists, are designed to sensitize students about their rights and responsibilities as women.

As part of its academic focus, the Centre also invites academicians who have researched on fields related to women's studies. These invited lectures focus on the history and development of critical thought and theories that mark out a separate area for Gender Studies as an independent and significant academic discipline.

The Gender Resource Corner at the Library, now a part of the Gender Resource Centre, is a separate space to showcase books, journals and other research compilations related to gender issues. Books and journals obtained from and related to organizations like the West Bengal Commission for Women, Sanhita Gender Resource Centre, School of Women's Studies (Jadavpur University) and other NGOs are stocked and displayed in this corner. A separate manual and digital catalogue are maintained. There are also books on the legal rights of women. Films on this subject supplement this section.

Conferences, Seminars and Workshops

UGC Sponsored State Level Seminar titled
"Contested Spaces: A Trans-disciplinary Approach to the Critical Interface between Humans and Environment" on 14.03.2015.
Venue: Muktiprana Sabhagriha
Time: 10 a.m. - 4.30 p.m.