Dr Parul Bhandari

St Edmund's College crest
St Edmund's College
  • Bye-Fellow, Director of Studies (HSPS) and Associate Tutor at St Edmund's College
Available to supervise masters students
Dr Parul Bhandari

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About

Parul Bhandari is a Bye-Fellow, Director of Studies (HSPS), and Associate Tutor at St. Edmund's College. She completed her MPhil (2009) and PhD (2014) at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge and BA (Hons) and MA in Sociology from Delhi University.

She was an Associate Professor of Sociology at O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), India, and has held Guest Faculty positions at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi and the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics (DSE), University of Delhi, and visiting scholar positions at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin, and the Centre of South Asian Studies (CSAS), University of Cambridge. She conducted her post-doctoral research fellowship at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), Delhi (the South Asia research unit for the CNRS) and is an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Multilevel Federalism (CMF), Institute of Social Sciences, Delhi.

Bhandari’s research interests lie in the study of class (elites and the middle class), gender, family, marriage, love and intimacies in contemporary South Asia.

Bhandari’s books include Dissent with Love: Ambiguity, Affect and Transformation in South Asia (ed) (Routledge, 2024), Matchmaking in Middle Class India: Beyond Arranged and Love Marriage (Springer, 2020), Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects, (Routledge, London 2019), and Exploring Indian Modernities: Ideas and Practices (co-edited) (Springer, 2018)

Research

Research interests

  • Elites
  • Gender
  • Love
  • Marriage
  • Family Relationships

Bhandari's research interests fall into broadly two categories:

  1. studying class inequalities from a top-down perspective (elites). Her focus specifically is on the gendered dynamics of elite life-worlds, geographies of inequality (residence, public spaces), consumption practices, and social and secret lives of money;
  2. researching love, marriage, and family in contemporary India. Here, she focuses on desires and gender asymmetries in intimacies, love, and marriage, use of digital media (matrimonial websites, dating apps), gendered violence in romantic relationships, and construction of class identities through choice of spouse.

Research Groups and Affiliations

Member of the BSA study group on elites.

 

Publications

Books

Journal Articles and Papers

Book Chapters

  • Bhandari, Parul. 2026. "Being a Good Rich Housewife: Religion, Family, and the Indian Business Elites", in María Luisa Méndez, Mike Savage, and Annette Lareau (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Global Elites, Oxford Handbooks (Oxford University Press: New York, Oxford), pp 179-191. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197780343.003.0012.
  • Bhandari, Parul. 2026. “Mythical Love and Conjugality in Everyday Life: Gender and Politics in India” in Pushpendra (ed) India's Social Landscape: Contestations, Resistance, and Transformation. (Routledge: London and New Delhi) Chpt 3 pp 47-62.
  • Bhandari, Parul. 2024. “Locating Friendship in Family: Study of Indian Elites” in Anuja Agrawal (ed)  Family Studies (Oxford University Press: New Delhi) pp 211-230.
  • Bhandari, Parul. 2020. “An Absent or Present Family? Tracing Bollywood Films from the Turn of the Century” in Nadja-Christina Schneider and Fritzi-Marie Titzmann (ed) Family Norms and Images in Transition: Contemporary Negotiations of Reproductive Labour, Love and Relationships in India (Nomos: Baden- Baden). Pp 75-93.
  • Bhandari, Parul. 2019. “The Secret Lives of Money: Locating Elite Women of India” in Jodhka and Naudet (ed) Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege and Inequality in Contemporary India. (Oxford University Press: New Delhi). Pp 274-300.
  • Bhandari, Parul. 2014. “In Quest of Identity: Student Culture in a Religious Minority Institution” in Meenakshi Thapan (ed) Ethnographies of Schooling in Contemporary India. Sage: New Delhi. Pp 182-224

Book Reviews

  • Bhandari, Parul. 2021. The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India by Ajantha Subramanian in Contributions to Indian Sociology 55 (1). 140-159.
  • Bhandari, Parul. 2021. Marriage and its Discontents: Women, Islam, and the Law in India by Sylvia Vatuk in South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal. 12th January.
  • Bhandari, Parul. 2019. The Making and Meaning of Relationship in Sri Lanka by Mihirini Sirisena in Contemporary South Asia 27(4), 571-572.
  • Bhandari, Parul. 2019. Marrying in South Asia: Shifting Concepts, Changing Practices in a Globalising World by Rajni Palriwala and Ravinder Kaur in Indian Journal of Gender Studies 26 (1-2): 224-227.
  • Bhandari, Parul. 2015. Forgotten Friends: Monks, Marriages, and Memories of Northeast India by Indrani Chatterjee in Contributions to Indian Sociology, 49 (1): 118-120.
  • Bhandari, Parul. 2015. The Right Spouse: Preferential Marriages in Tamil Nadu by Isabelle Clark-Decès in The Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 21, 927-961.

Media Articles

Teaching and supervision

Available to supervise masters students
  • Supervisor for SOC1, SOC9, SOC10
  • Part of teaching team (lectures and seminars) for SOC9, SOC10