Parul Bhandari

Parul Bhandari is a Bye-fellow, Associate Tutor, and Director of Studies, Sociology, (HSPS) 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 Matchmaking in Middle Class India: Beyond Arranged and Love Marriage (Springer, 2020), Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects, (Routledge, London 2019).

Research Interests

Bhandari's research interests fall into broadly two categories:

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
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.

Teaching

Supervisor for SOC1
Guest Lecturer and supervisor for SOC 12

Publications

Books

In print

Bhandari, Parul (2020) Matchmaking in Middle Class India: Beyond Arranged and Love Marriage. Springer: Singapore, New Delhi.

Bhandari, Parul (2019) Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects. Routledge: London.

Choukroune Leïla and Parul Bhandari ed. (2018) Exploring Indian Modernities: Ideas and Practices. Springer: Singapore, New Delhi.

Forthcoming

Bhandari, Parul (ed). 2024. Dissent with Love: Ambiguity, Affect and Transformations in South Asia. Routledge, New Delhi.

Donner, Henrike and Parul Bhandari. 2025. Love in India: Politics, Desires and Sexualities Anthem Press, London.

Journal Articles and Papers

Bhandari, Parul (2023) Lived Reality of Elite Neighbourhoods: Geographies of Inequality in Delhi. Contemporary South Asia. 31 (1). 36-50.

Bhandari, Parul (2020) Gendered Impact of COVID-19 in Indian Federalism Perspectives (IFP-4) paper series. Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.

Bhandari, Parul (2020) Pre-marital Relationships and Violence: Experiences of Working Middle Class Women in Delhi in Sen, Kaur, and Zabiliute (ed) (En)Countering Sexual Violence in South Asian City, in Gender, Place and Culture. 27 (1). 13-33

Bhandari, Parul (2017) Pre-Marital Relationships and the Family in Modern India in Parul Bhandari and Fritzi-Marie Titzmann (ed) Changing Family Realities in South Asia in South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (Issue 16).

Bhandari, Parul and Fritzi-Marie Titzmann (2017) Introduction: Family Realities in South Asia: Adaptations and Resilience in Changing Family Realities in South Asia (ed) by Parul Bhandari and Fritzi-Marie Titzmann in South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (Issue 16).

Bhandari, Parul (2017) Towards a Sociology of Elites: Marriage Alliances, Vulnerabilities, and Resistance in Bollywood in Society and Culture in South Asia, Vol 3, Issue 1.

Book Chapters

Bhandari, Parul. “Female Friendships as ‘Second’ Families: Study of Indian Elites” in Anuja Agrawal (ed) Familial Fields: Studies from India (Oxford University Press: New Delhi). Forthcoming

Bhandari, Parul. “Mythical Love and Conjugality in Everyday Life: Gender and Politics in India” in Pushpendra (ed) Time, Place and Norms: Contours of Social Life in India. (Routledge: Delhi). Forthcoming

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.