Parul Bhandari

Parul Bhandari is Director of Studies (Human, Social and Political Sciences), Bye-Fellow and Associate Tutor at St. Edmund's College, University of Cambridge. Her research interests lie in the field of sociology of elites, class and gender inequalities, love, marriage and intimacy, and popular culture.

Prior to this position, she was Associate Professor in Sociology at O.P. Jindal Global University, India, and visiting scholar at Humboldt University, Berlin. She was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, New Delhi), the South Asia research unit of CNRS, France. She has also held guest faculty positions (teaching) at the Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Delhi, and the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics (DSE), University of Delhi.

She has authored four books: Dissent with Love: Ambiguity, Affect, and Transformations in South Asia (Routledge, 2024); Matchmaking in Middle Class India: Beyond Arranged and Love Marriage (Springer, 2020); Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects, (Routledge, London 2019); and Exploring Indian Modernities: Ideas and Practices (co-edited) (Springer, 2018). She has co-edited and contributed an article to a special journal issue, ‘Changing Family Realities in South Asia?’ (South Asian Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2017), and has other publications on Bollywood, violence against women, and anxieties of singlehood in India. She occasionally writes for popular outlets including Scroll.in, ThePrint, The Indian Express, and The Tribune.