Nikita Sud elected as next Vicegerent

Congratulations to Nikita Sud, Governing Body Fellow, who was elected as the next Vicegerent of Wolfson Colle

Professor Nikita Sud has been elected Vicegerent for the College with effect from 1 October 2020. She replaces outgoing Vicegerent Professor Jeremy Johns.
 

Professor Sud told us, "I'm looking forward to being Wolfson's next Vicegerent. It is an honour. I do have a knot in my stomach, but that may be par for the course. I would like to be able to speak to and understand the concerns of different constituencies in college. I am well placed to do so, having begun life here as a Research Fellow (2008). I've been on Governing Body since 2011, and in this period have seen different sides of college life. I have served on Fellowships committee, the Day Nursery sub-committee, and the Equality and Welfare Committee. Being on General Purposes Committee over the last three years has given me an overview of how this complex, yet warm and humane system runs. It takes a lot of people, ideas, competencies and more to come together to have those meals on plates, rooms in order, gardens bursting into colour in spring, conferences or exhibitions up and running, lectures advertised and delivered, or computing or archiving systems in shape. In a world that is seeing authoritarian, top-down politics wreak havoc in ordinary lives, I am all the more appreciative of institutional governance that is open to the viewpoints of different groups. I would like us to strive to remain open, respectful, diverse, and welcoming in our student body, fellowship, committees, and most of all in our ideas.
 
As Vicegerent, I will be the disciplinary lead at Wolfson. I do hope that I see very little of the indisciplined side of college!  However, I like to think of myself as undisciplined-- having started academic life as a historian, who got her first university job in a department of politics. I now teach and research in the inter- and multi-disciplinary field of development studies. I am all for creative mingling, which is why I feel so at home at Wolfson.
 
On a more personal note, my children aged 9 and 6 are most excited about this impending Vicegerent role. In fact they are the ones who really urged me to take it on. Apparently I am now in the august company of Professor Minerva McGonagall, the Deputy Head of Hogwarts."
 
Professor Sud's research interests are centred on the politics of development, the neo-liberal transformation of postcolonial states and governance, and the political sociology and political economy of contemporary India. She is an Associate Professor of Development Studies and part of the South Asia Research Cluster.