The Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies organises the DOING GENDER Lecture Series in cooperation with her partners. These lectures stress the importance of doing gender work combined with an active involvement in the practice of gender theory and research. The concept of DOING GENDER supports a hands-on approach to gender issues in the sense of social and political engagement with the new forms of gender inequalities that are taking shape in the world today. The lecture series wants to give space to the new generations of gender theorists and practitioners and to perspectives that innovate the field and do gender in new ways. Key is the notion of doing gender: what is the state of the art definition of gender? How do contemporary scholars and activists utilise this definition?
On Wednesday, December 10 2025, Dr. Ankita Mukherjee will give a Doing Gender Lecture entitled Beyond Transgender: The Social and Political Lives of Gender Nonconforming People in India.
The Doing Gender Lecture series for 2025-2026 will be framed around the theme of Feminist Solidarity in Times of War.
Lecture: Beyond Transgender: The Social and Political Lives of Gender Nonconforming People in India.
This lecture is informed by the broad questions and themes explored in Ankita’s upcoming book, Beyond Transgender: The Social and Political Lives of Gender Nonconforming People in India, in which she examines the politics of identity and community among gender nonconforming people (GNCP) in relation to the transformations brought about by HIV/AIDS activism and transgender rights legislations.
Drawing on thirty-seven in-depth interviews, the book explores how GNCP assert their agency and establish themselves as rights-bearing citizens against the backdrop of the now-repealed Section 377, which criminalised same-sex relationships, and the now-enacted Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Bill, which medicalises the transgender category and limits self-determination.
It advances three primary arguments. First, it contends that GNCP identities are provisional, goal-directed, and strategically negotiated. Second, it argues that there is no singular “community” but rather multiple overlapping communities with porous boundaries through which participants structure their social lives. Third, it contends that the recent trans rights legislation in India represents a “negative moment” (Sircar, 2017), emerging from the convergence of transgender rights with neoliberal governance. As such, it calls for alternative justice-seeking modes that centre transgender voices and foster horizontal and intersectional solidarities.
Biography
Ankita Mukherjee is an independent researcher who received her PhD in Sociology from Newcastle University, UK. Her doctoral research employs a social constructionist lens to examine how gender nonconforming people in urban Indian NGOs navigate identity categories and community relations. Her first monograph, Beyond Transgender: The Social and Political Lives of Gender Nonconforming People in India (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), develops this work further by situating it within the wider consideratio
ns of methodological praxis and researcher positionality. Her current research interests include homonationalism and its entanglements with authoritarianism, on which she has published blogs for the European Consortium for Political Research.
Based in Eindhoven, Ankita has contributed to the local magazine Eindless, drawing on interviews with designers, policy makers, and LGBTQ+ activists. In addition, she regularly collaborates with Expat Spouses Initiative, a social enterprise that supports the professional reintegration of international spouses in the Netherlands. She currently works as a social researcher at the Eindhoven-based health start-up AIKON Health, where she investigates the humanistic and socio-economic burdens of heart failure.
Doing Gender Lecture by Dr. Ankita Mukherjee
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Lecture: Beyond Transgender: The Social and Political Lives of Gender Nonconforming People in India.
Time: 17:15 – 18:45 hrs.
Location: Drift 25, Room 102.
Chair: TBA
Registration: nog@uu.nl
Reading and Preparation:
1. Dutta, A., & Roy, R. (2014). Decolonizing transgender in India: Some reflections. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1(3), 320-337.
2. Saria, V. (2019). Begging for change: Hijras, law and nationalism. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 53(1), 133-157.
