Gender representation of any gender except cis-men, among Vice Chancellors of Indian universities is abysmal. Until recently, Anju Bhasin was one of the few women holding this top position as Vice Chancellor of the newly formed Jammu Cluster University. Anju is no longer heading the JCU; she resigned early this year owing to much instability since the abrogation of Article 370 that gave J&K a special status in governance due to its special political, historic and cultural history. Today, Anju is looking forward to getting back to her research – she is a physicist most interested in phenomena that took place before the big bang.
Here’s a podcast featuring a recent interview with Anju Bhasin where she talks about her contributions to high energy physics, to universities in Jammu as well as being a women on top in Indian higher education. And below some pictures from my visit to JCU in December 2019.
Note: This podcast has been produced by Josh Thomas and the author. This piece is a part of Season 5 of TheLifeofScience.com sponsored by a grant from DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance. Featured image was created by Ipsa Jain, with photograph taken by Aashima. A transcript of this podcast is available here. We would like to thank Shalini Mahadev for transcribing the podcast.
Anju Bhasin in her office as the first VC of Jammu Cluster University in Dec 2019
