Please join us for this HERG seminar, taking place in WBW LG/11. A Teams meeting link is available to those who are not able to attend in person.

Across 2020-22, a collaboration between Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development and ECS resulted in a set of writing workshops designed to support the writing capacity of early career researchers from the marginalised castes in India, in the areas of social work and youth work.

The project was funded through a British Academy Writing Workshop grant, and was enacted both online and in person, during the height of the Covid pandemic. Following a call to participate, 17 early career researchers joined a programme of online sessions focused on writing skills, a mentoring programme, a peer to peer support programme, a hybrid writing workshop in India and ongoing writing support through the initiation of a writing centre at the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development.

Through this hybrid seminar we will first present the project rationale (i.e. why we believed these writing workshops to be so important) and key activities undertaken, and then we will reflect on the process from different positionalities (Aisha: PI at King’s; Lalitha: Co-PI at Rajiv Gandhi National Institute; Mili: Academic mentor; Ajeet: Participant). Overall, we believe the project thrived because of the underpinning values of collaboration and participation, a critical engagement with writing, a recognition of the exclusion faced by participants and the high levels of commitment from the ‘participants’ and Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development.