Anwesha Das

Throughout my teaching career as an academician, I have sought to develop my teaching skills in such a way so as to keep students with divergent backgrounds and skill levels engaged and challenged by the same class. Beyond striving to ensure that students learn the fundamental content of the courses I teach, my objectives as a university teacher are as follows: (a) to foster critical thinking skills; (b) to facilitate the acquisition of lifelong learning skills; (c) to help students develop evidence-based problem-solving strategies; and (d) to prepare students for research-based learning. Furthermore, my overall teaching philosophy is based on two principles: (a) active student learning strongly influences student-learning outcomes; and (b) assessment procedures strongly influence student acquisition of knowledge.

An advantage of defining a broad range of goals for student performance is that it allows for
students to engage with the material in different ways. While I strongly believe in the central
importance of reading and writing in developing critical thinking, I have found that many
students who have difficulty engaging with the written word can perform very well in other
kinds of exercises: oral presentations, and producing short plays or films for class. Inspired by Howard Gardner’s theory of “multiple intelligences,” I try to ensure that students who might otherwise feel shut-out have a chance to engage with the class material in ways best suited to their own style of learning.
Having a wide-range of goals can be just as important for PhD students as it is for undergrads, albeit for different reasons. Graduate students tend to have strong reading and writing skills, but can often lack the performative skills which make for an effective teacher or communicator. Working on these skills is an essential part of their professional training.

Social science requires learning how to see one’s own society as an outsider might see it, and to
attempt to think about other societies as a local might think about them. For students who have
little experience traveling outside their own state of residence, this can be a difficult challenge,
but the best ethnographies and documentary films are designed to accomplish just such a task.
Following my emphasis on clearly articulated goals, I also work hard to break down the process
of reading an academic text into a series of smaller steps by asking students to identify the main
themes of a text, the nature of the data and the methodology used. At the same time, especially
when using English texts, I try to move students away from doing word-by-word translations by
teaching them how to approach the text as an organic whole.

My extensive research and teaching experience in the domains of migration studies, historical impact, political theory and critical analysis enables me to apply my knowledge into practice. My publications addressing racial inequality, the use of design thinking in teaching doctoral and postgraduate courses, and my role in developing ethical policies within research department in academics, demonstrates my ability in contributing to academic programme development. As a student of literature and social sciences, I have gained insight into the practice of racial discrimination by critically analysing English, American, African and Indian texts. Research gave me a flexibility to draw intersectional connections. In my doctoral studies, I have used the methods of qualitative analysis and intersectionality to examine the representation of historiography in West African literature. I am internationally published in the fields of African studies, history, literature, political theory and public policy.