What is the relationship between the ethical and faith commitments of a researcher? Are the worlds of academic work and religious belief two separate realms? Can we inhabit both worlds simultaneously?
On 18 June 2026 at 1400 UTC, Dr Mrinalini Sebastian, an independent scholar who works as the Site Coordinator at the Grace-Trinity Partnership Site of Harcum College in Philadelphia, will self-reflexively discuss her journey as a college lecturer, a researcher, and now a mentor to a small group of urban college students who work mostly as pre-school teachers by using the concepts of accompaniment, attention, and recognition.
Dr Sebastian is interested in exploring the history and the contexts within which early Protestant Christian communities came into existence in south India. Her areas of research include postcolonial and feminist theories of literature and culture, and the connected histories of the circulation of botanical and literary knowledge, especially through religious and local agents.
Dr. Sebastian is the author of The Enterprise of Reading Differently: Novels of Shashi Deshpande in Postcolonial Arguments (New Delhi: Prestige, 2000). She is a former lecturer in English at Vasavi Vidyanikethan College for Women and at the Postgraduate Centre of Sheshadripuram College and a Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, India.
