British Academy for the humanities and social sciences

Carole Spary has been awarded £7705 by the British Academy for a research project on 'Performing representation: women parliamentarians and political participation in India'. The research will investigate women’s political participation as elected representatives in the national parliament of India. It will focus on selected parliamentary debates as well as the Committee for the Empowerment of Women. The research aims to understand the dynamics of participating in debates, how women MPs are enabled or constrained by institutional norms and practices, and the representational claims they make as women MPs. The research is part of a larger project examining women’s participation as a minority group (less than 11%) in the Indian parliament. The grant will enable research trips to India to conduct elite interviews with MPs and to collect contemporary and archival documentary data from the national parliament.