Varadarajan Narayanan
Areas of Interest & Expertise
- Philosophy of Education
- History of Education
- History of Political thought
- Collecting and Archiving Schoolbooks
Biography
Varadarajan Narayanan(Varda as he fondly called as) studied philosophy at Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, and then at the University of Hyderabad, before completing his doctoral degree at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He taught for two years at Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, before joining this University. He now teaches courses in the area of education studies for the MA Education programme. He is also associated with the Schoolbook Archive project, an open-access online portal to host schoolbooks developed and used in India and the subcontinent in the last two hundred years.
Varadarajan Narayanan is working on three collaborative book-length projects: one, a collection of essays on Nai Talim; two, an edition of various curriculum documents that were prepared by the Hindustani Talimi Sangh; and three, a collection of interviews with contemporary scholars working on intellectual cultures in vernaculars of early modern north India.
Courses
Knowledge and Curricular Debates in Social Studies
This course will enable students to gain a critical perspective to deal with these issues and orient themselves towards meaningful intervention in practice.
Philosophy of Education
A course going over the concepts, methodologies and interdisciplinary intersections that determine educational action in various contexts.
Curriculum Studies
The word ‘curriculum’ has its origin in the racing tracks of ancient Greece, to mean, quite literally, a course.
Publications:
- Narayanan, V., & Mitra, R. (forthcoming). Schoolbooks Archive. Teacher Plus
- Srinivasan, R., & Narayanan, V. (forthcoming). Teacher Preparation for Pre-Basic Education. In Pandya, K, et al. edited. Redefining the Early Childhood Profession in India: Challenges and Potential. Orient Blackswan.
- Prakash, R., & Narayanan, V. (2020). Emerging Scholarship on Vernacular Languages in Early Modern North India: A Conversation with Imre Bangha. Engage: Economic and Political Weekly. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/emerging-scholarship-vernacular-languages-early?0=ip_login_no_cache%3Df16666dfdcee4bb8f607f3a1df8fd11c%20
Conversations on Schoolbooks:
This is a series of interviews with leading scholars and collectives on different aspects of schoolbooks production and use in India and the subcontinent.
- With Dr T V Venkateswaran, on Science Textbooks in Tamil in 19th Century Madras Presidency
- With Professor Abhijit Gupta, on Book History and Textbooks in Early Colonial Bengal.
- With C N Subramaniam, on State and Textbook Development Processes in India.