With over five decades of pioneering work, Prof. R. Indira has seamlessly blended scholarship, institution-building and public engagement. She served at the University of Mysore, India for 42 long years, leading the Department of Sociology, serving as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies, and the International Centre. Her journey continues to inspire generations of students and scholars across India.

Since her superannuation from the University of Mysore in 2014 she served as a Scholar-in-Residence at Kuvempu and Bangalore Universities, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Delhi, and University of Johannesburg, South Africa and Academic Director(India) of the ‘Study Abroad Program in Global Health’ of Florida International University, USA.

She currently holds the title of Provost( Social Sciences and Allied Faculties), Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences, Bengaluru. A former President of the Indian Sociological Society(ISS), she received the ISS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022 for her tireless contribution to the discipline of sociology.

A two-time Fulbright Scholar, four-time Shastri Fellow, and an ICSSR Senior Fellow, Prof. Indira has mentored 27 doctoral students and led policy-relevant field research, most notably with forest-dependent communities in the Joida-Dandeli region of Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka advancing women’s empowerment. She has mentored the gender course in Study India Programmes offered by universities in US and Canada, and taught courses on gender to several batches of students visiting India under the Study India Programs.

A public sociologist and a prolific bilingual author, she has been assiduously contributing in English and Kannada through her writings both in popular media and academic publications Her current advocacy centres on multilingual, field-immersive, interdisciplinary sociology, including computational social sciences that link data, lived experience, and public purpose. Her life and career reflect her deep commitment to social justice and women’s empowerment and today Prof. Indira stands as one of India’s most distinguished and respected sociologists.