Professor Malabika Sarkar
Professor Malabika Sarkar was elected a Foundation Fellow at Clare Hall in 2025. She is an academic, former Vice-Chancellor and Professor of English.
She was Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University, Delhi NCR, from 2019 to 2023 and Professor of English. As Principal Academic Advisor and Professor of English at Ashoka University from 2015, she was additionally Ashoka’s first Dean of Faculty and Research (2016-2019) before becoming Vice-Chancellor in 2019.
She was First Vice-Chancellor of Presidency University in Kolkata (2011-2014), responsible for the transition of the institution from Presidency College (established as Hindu College in 1817) to Presidency University.
Earlier, she was Professor of English at Jadavpur University, a member of the University Council (1980-1985), a panel member of NAAC, and member of other UGC committees.
An alumna of Cambridge University, later Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, she is now a Life Member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge. She is also an invited Fellow of the English Association (FEA), UK.
Primarily a Miltonist, her academic field is Early Modern Literature and the History of Science. Her other area of interest is Romantic Literature and culture and she was the Founder President of the Centre for Studies in Romantic Literature (CSRL) from 1994 to 2018, directing its annual international conferences for twenty five years.
She has presented her work at various conferences in India, the UK and North America.
Her books include Cosmos and Character in Paradise Lost (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Moneta’s Veil: Essays on Nineteenth Century Literature (Delhi: Pearson, 2009), The Bengal Club in History (Kolkata: The Bengal Club, 2006) apart from book chapters and many scholarly articles in refereed journals. Book chapters include “Astronomical Signs in Paradise Lost” in Milton and the Ends of Time ed. Juliet Cummins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), “Milton’s Global Impact: India” in A New Companion to Milton ed. Thomas N. Corns (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), “Yeats, Kipling and the Haven-Finding Art” in Kipling and Yeats at 150 ed. Pramodini Varma and Anubhav Pradhan (Oxford & New York: Routledge 2019). Her article on “The Magic of Shakespeare’s Sonnets” published in Renaissance Studies, Vol.12, No.2, June 1988 was republished in Shakespeare Criticism Yearbook 1998 (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2000) in their “Selection of the Year’s Most Noteworthy Studies of William Shakespeare’s Plays and Poetry”.
She is a member of the International Advisory Board of the journal European Romantic Review.
