Parul Bhandari

Biography

Parul Bhandari is a researcher at the CSH, where she previously also held a Post-doctoral fellowship (2014-2016). Currently she is also a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund’s College and the Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS), University of Cambridge, UK. She has also held Guest Faculty positions at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, and the Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT), Delhi. Dr. Bhandari completed her MPhil and PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. Her PhD was supported by the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust.

Research Interest

Her main research interests lie in the field of social class (middle class and elites), gender, marriage, and family. Her doctoral thesis explains the makings of middle class identities through the processes of spouse-selection. Her research interest is in providing an in-depth understanding of the various aspects of modern matchmaking in New Delhi. Here, her focus is not only on the experiences and opinions of the marrying individuals but also on the involvement of family, the role of modern matchmakers as of matrimonial websites and matrimonial bureaus, and crucially, of pre-marital romantic relationships. She explains the specific ways in which middle class identities are constituted, invoked, and reiterated in these experiences and processes of matchmaking.