Debaditya Bhattacharya: BIO

Debaditya Bhattacharya teaches literature at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. He has been working on a historical sociology of Indian universities. In his recent work, he explores the relationship between the public university and its meanings of ‘publicness’, while also attempting a critical compendium on postcolonial higher education in India. Debaditya is the author of The Indian University: A Critical History (Orient BlackSwan, 2025) and Making Sense of the University: A Manifesto for Our Times (Cambridge University Press, 2026). Two of his edited anthologies on critical university studies include The Idea of the University: Histories and Contexts (Routledge, 2019) and The University Unthought: Notes for a Future (Routledge, 2019). As Board member of the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP), based at the University of California Berkeley, Debaditya has been collaborating with partners from across the world on the place of critical theory within university settings and outside. He is also co-editor of the anthology of essays Sentiment, Politics, Censorship: The State of Hurt (Sage, 2016).