- Interruptions” at IIT Bhilai
The Department of Liberal Arts held its 4th Graduate Research Meet “The Everyday and its
Interruptions: The Routines and Breakdowns of Ordinary Life” at IIT Bhilai on 2-3 November 2026 Dr Shalini Sharma, Associate Professor, IISER Pune delivered the keynote lecture on “The
Everyday: Generative Interruption as Site, Stance and Spark”. Dr Sharma’s talk examined how
interrupting the ordinary opens up vital speculative and creative spaces, transforming how we
research, communicate, and act within vulnerable and distressed landscapes.
This edition of the graduate conference featured papers presented by research scholars and postgraduate students
from across the country. The research papers dealt with a diverse range of topics in the domain
of humanities and social sciences from an interdisciplinary perspective and explored the multiple
interruptions in ordinary routines that make the everyday a site of intellectual enquiry.
The presentations addressed the extraordinariness of the everyday in key aspects of contemporary life
such as labour, care giving, migration and intergenerational memory of historical events. An
academic writing workshop sponsored by South Asia Research and led by Dr Anirudh Tagat,
Research Author, Monk Prayogshala, was also organized as part of the research meet.
The graduate research meet is an annual conference organized by the Department of Liberal Arts as
an academic platform for the research scholars in the domain of humanities and social sciences
to present their research papers and engage in scholarly interactions and dialogues on topical and
socially relevant issues particularly focusing on South Asian contexts.