Faculty

Biography

Nitya Pawar holds a PhD in English from Ashoka University in India. Her scholarly pursuits revolve around the profound world of Marathi bhakti focusing on the medieval Marathi saint-poet, Janabai and foregrounds bhakti saints as critical thinkers and translators. Trained initially as an engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, she transitioned to the humanities through an M.A. in Society and Culture from the same place. During this period, she produced a master's thesis on Sant Namdev, which laid the foundation for her current work on devotion, language, and translation. She is especially interested in how acts of devotion and interpretation become sites of both personal and collective transformation through critical engagement. Her scholarship, situated at the intersection of literary studies, translation theory, and cultural studies, has been presented at national and international platforms, with a co-authored forthcoming book-chapter in a Routledge volume on comparative mysticism. She is also the recipient of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship's Rising Star Grant for the year 2022–23. Her work explores themes of mobility, caste, gender, and spirituality through the lens of translation, with broader interests in Indian Knowledge Systems, Indian Literature in Translation, pedagogical practices, and academic writing.