Dolly Sharma

Dolly Sharma has been awarded Felix Scholarship to pursue PhD in South Asian Studies at SOAS. Her research examines and illuminates the lives of women performers in nauṭaṅkī, a folk musical theatre performed in Hindi by traveling troupes across North India. Her research combines decolonial feminist and ethnomusicological methodologies. 

She aims to develop a feminist archive in the field of Indian folk performance tradition. Her research languages are Awadhi, Braj Bhasha, Hindi, and English. Her geographical focus are the states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. She has presented her research on nauṭaṅkī at TaPRA Workshop at University of Warwick, CCLPS conference at SOAS and PGR conference at UCL. 

Before joining SOAS as a doctoral student, she worked as Assistant Professor of English at JECRC University in Jaipur, Rajasthan. She taught African Literature and Women's Literature to undergraduate students; Indian Writing in English and Translation and Gender Studies to postgraduate students; Popular Literature, Life Skills and Literature in Social Spaces to undergraduate students across the school of Humanities & Social Sciences; and Legal English to undergraduate students in the school of Law. She was also appointed as Exam Coordinator and later promoted to Exam Centre in Charge. 

Dolly earned her undergraduate degree in English from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi in 2018 followed by MA in English from Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi in 2020. She has qualified National Eligibility Test (NET) in 2021, which entitles her to teach as Assistant Professor at any university in India. Being an avid language learner, she has learnt Italian Language online for four months at Universita Degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy in 2021. She was awarded distinction for Beginners course in Russian Language that she pursued at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi in 2021. 

Sharma, Dolly. “Francesca Orsini, East of Delhi: Multilingual Literary Culture and World Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), xix + 288 pp.” South Asia Research, vol. 44, issue 3, Nov 2024, pp. 422-425. Book Review. 

Indian Performing Arts

Folk Music

Feminism

Women in Performance

Nauṭaṅkī

https://orcid.org/0009-0005-0333-6276