Malashri Lal

Malashri Lal is a writer and academician Currently, she is serving as a General Council member of the Sahitya Akademi. She was, until 27 July 2016, Dean of Colleges, Dean, Academic Activities and Projects, and Professor of English at the University of Delhi and has held senior administrative positions including that of Director, Women’s Studies, in the same university. Her academic specialization is in Women and Gender Studies about which she has sixteen books. Her areas of field work on women have been in West Bengal, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. Lal’s feminist oriented research and publications have touched issues in India, USA, UK, and Canada. She has also volunteered in social development work for women’s empowerment in various organizations in Delhi and Rajasthan.
==Early life==
Malashri Lal (née Mukerji) was born on 1 January 1949 to Reena and Mohan Mukerji in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Her father, Mohan Mukerji, was in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). Malashri’s early childhood was spent in Alwar and Jaipur.
==Education==
The Mukerji family moved to Jaipur in 1953 and Malashri received her education at Maharani Gayatri Devi Girls’ Public School from then to 1963 (except for two years at Sophia Girls’ School at Ajmer). In the Indian School Certificate Examination conducted by Cambridge University in 1963, Malashri ranked first and received a gold medal. She also received training in Bengali, Indian classical dance, Bengali culture and Rabindra sangeet in her childhood days.
Malashri Lal joined Maharani’s College, University of Rajasthan to pursue her college education. She continued at the same university and received the Gold Medal for standing first in the Masters examination in English in 1970 and also completed her PhD in English in 1982, working on a dissertation on American novelist Henry James.http://illl.du.ac.in/pdf/malashri.pdf
==Professional Career==
Malashri Lal started teaching at the Department of English, Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi in July 1972 and continued there until she joined the campus Department of English in 1984 and was Chair of the department from 2000 to 2003. She retired from the University of Delhi in 2016. Malashri Lal held important administrative positions at the University of Delhi
* Dean of Colleges: 2013 to 2016.
* Dean, Academic Activities & Projects: 2012 to 2016.
===Books, authored/edited/coedited===
*Betrayed by Hope: A Play on the Life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2020.
*Finding Radha: The Quest for Love, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2019.
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*Gender and Diversity, Jaipur & Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2015.
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*Female Empowerment: Impact of Literacy in Jaipur District, Rajasthan, New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1995. 
=== Fellowships and Research ===
Malashri Lal was recipient of several fellowships from the Fulbright, American Association of University Women, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Shastri-Indo Canadian Institute and the British Council, and conducted research in prestigious institutions such as Harvard University, USA, Bellagio, Italy, and Newcastle, UK. Lal has been a Fellow and a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla; member of a research team on ‘Post-Colonial Translations: The Case of South Asia’ at Newcastle University, UK; and coordinator for ‘Managing Diversity: Oral Cultures as resource in Indigenous communities in Canada and India’ with the International Council for Canadian Studies.
=== Literary Award committees and juries ===
Malashri Lal has served on international book award committees including the Sahitya Akademi, the Bharatiya Jnanpith, Commonwealth Writers Prize (UK), The Hindu Fiction Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and the Sushila Devi Award for women’s fiction in English, among others.
===Advisory and Consultancy positions===
* Senior Consultant, Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India (New Delhi) during planning and implementing the 150th birth Anniversary programmes for Rabindranath Tagore (2010-2012). She was also a member of the ‘Indian Literature Abroad’ initiative of the Ministry of Culture which selected Indian language books for translation into various international languages.
* Member, Board of Management of Guru Govind Singh Indraprastha University (New Delhi), KR Mangalam University (Gurugram), Rathinam College (Coimbatore), Kotah Open University, Rajasthan, DAV College, Yamuna Nagar, Banasthali Vidyapeeth, Rajasthan, among others.
===Voluntary work for women’s empowerment===
Malashri Lal is an Executive committee member of The Guild of Service, a national developmental NGO holding a consultative status with ECOSOC of the United Nations. She assists women’s empowerment through educational programmes in Rajasthan and is also the Secretary General of SANWED, a South Asian alliance headquartered at New Delhi at present.
===Creative Writing===
Malashri Lal’s poems and stories have been published in Indian Literature, Confluence, The Beacon, Setu, online portals and several anthologies. She is on the editorial board for the international anthology Soul Spaces: Poems on Cities, Towns and Villages. Believing in advocacy for poetry and other arts, Malashri Lal has founded two initiatives, “The Shyamoli Series on Culture” in Jaipur which invites writers to present a talk or performance, and “Under the Pilkhan Tree” in New Delhi which is a poetry reading group. She also conducts workshops on the theme and sub-themes relating to “Women in India”.
Category:1949 births
Category:People from Lucknow
Category:University of Rajasthan alumni
Category:Indian people
Category:Academicians
Category:Writers