Sujata Patel holds the 2021 Kersten Hesselgren Visiting Professorship
Sujata Patel is the 2021 Kersten Hesselgren Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at Umeå University. Most recently, she was a Distinguished Professor at Savitribai Phule Pune University and a National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. She has also been a professor at the Universities of Hyderabad, Pune, and SNDT Women’s University. Professor Patel's work on modernity and social theory, history of sociology/social sciences, urbanization and city-formation, social movements, gender construction, and caste and class formation in India combines an historical sensibility with four perspectives-Marxism, feminism, spatial studies and post structuralism. She has authored, edited and co-edited 13 books and 65 peer reviewed papers/book chapters. Professor Patel is the Series Editor of Oxford India Studies in Contemporary Society (Oxford, India) and Cities and the Urban Imperative (Routledge, India) and in between 2010-2015 edited Sage Studies in International Sociology and Current Sociology Monographs (Sage, London). She has been associated in various capacities with the International Sociological Association and has been its first Vice President for National Associations (2002-2006). She was the President of Indian Sociological Society from January 2016 to December 2017. Professor Patel holds a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, a MA from Dalhousie University, and MA and BA from the University of Bombay.
Professor Patel has taught sociology at the Universities of Savitribai Phule Pune, Hyderabad, Pune, and SNDT Women’s University. She has long been an active interlocutor of teaching and learning practices and has written on the challenges that intervene in its reorganization within classrooms and in university structures. She has also coordinated a postgraduate online teaching and learning resource of 15 courses in Sociology titled Epathshala.