In 2023, Dr. Jana Tschurenev joined the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute as the Principal Investigator of the Research Group “Democratising the Family? Gender equality, parental rights, and child welfare after 1945” (DEMFAM), for which she was awarded a Consolidator Grant of the European Research Council (ERC).

Before joining Freie Universität, she worked as a Deputy Professor for Modern Indian History, and a Visiting Lecturer for Gender and Development at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen. Important career steps were the appointment as a Principal Investigator with the Transnational Research Group “Poverty and Education in India” (2014-2017) – a pilot project for the foundation of the Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies (MWFS) in Delhi, and the position as a lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) for global history at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETHZ) (2009-2013). Additionally, Jana Tschurenev received fellowships from the IGK Work and Life Cycle in Global History (re:work), Berlin, and the International Centre for Advanced Study “Metamorphoses of the Political” (ICAS:MP), Delhi. Since 2020, she is a book review editor for the History of Education with the German online platform for historical sciences, H-Soz-Kult.

Jana Tschurenev holds a PhD from the Comparative Education Centre, Humboldt University Berlin. Her thesis, Imperial Experiments in Education: Monitorial Schooling in India, 1789-1840 was awarded the thesis prize of the German Historical Institute London (GHIL). Her first monograph, Empire, Civil Society, and the Beginnings of Colonial Education in India was published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press. Currently, she is finalising her second book manuscript (which is also her Habilitation Thesis) Precarious Professionalisation: Gender, Poverty, and Early Childhood Education in India, 1880s-1970s.

My research interest is the transformation of socialisation processes, of reproductive, care, and gender relations from the late 18^th century to the present. This includes the history of ‘education for all’, of kindergartens and crèches, domestic caregiving, parenting, and the family. I study these changes in the context of (post-)colonialism, (post-)socialism, and globalisation, and the reconfiguration of social inequality. Moreover, I am interested in the history of social governance, and the regulation of ‘the private’. How do social policies (including education, public health, and family policies) take shape in the interaction between diverse social movements and civil society organisations, the state, and international institutions?

ERC Research Group: Democratization of the Family? Gender equality, parental rights, and child welfare after 1945 (DEMFAM)

Through the lens of ‘shared and equal parenting’, DEMFAM studies the transformation of gender and the family in contemporary global history. First, it studies a shift from hierarchical to egalitarian conceptions of family relations, or a democratisation of the family. This entails the equalisation of parental rights within and outside the domain of heterosexual marriages, which coincided with the harmonisation of the rights of marital and non-marital children. The emergence of post-familial care arrangements, secondly, led to a denser regulation, or juridification of co-parenting. Inner-familial power shifts were accompanied by a reconfiguration of family-state relations. The project investigates the development of judicial and extra-judicial institutions (including family courts, social work interventions, and mediation agencies) which aimed to promote parental cooperation and safeguard child welfare in familial conflict situations. Finally, it shows how parental rights assumed centre stage in the twenty-first century’s ‘gender wars’, or the politicisation of gender, sexuality, and the family in struggles over national and religious identity, liberalism, and democracy.

DEMFAM analyses these (limited and contradictory) transformative processes across different political-economic and legal systems within a shared global environment. The project develops a social history of law reform on different political scales to understand global dynamics of divergence and convergence in the transformation of gender and the family. It combines the analysis of transnational knowledge circulation (including policy transfer, civil society mobilisation, and scientific expertise) with the comparative study of family change in Western Europe (FRG, UK), Central Eastern Europe (the GDR, Poland), and South Asia (India). Integrating research on post-colonial legal pluralism, and on (post-)socialist gender and family politics, DEMFAM opens new horizons for global gender history.

Books

2019. Empire,Civil Society,and the Beginnings of Colonial Education in India.Delhi: Cambridge University Press.

2014 (with Judith Große, and Francesco Spöring, eds.) Biopolitik und Sittlichkeitsreform. Kampagnen gegen Alkohol, Drogen und Prostitution,1880-1950. Frankfurt: Campus.

2014 (with Harald Fischer-Tine, eds.) A History of Alcohol and Drugs in Modern South Asia. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.

Journal Articles (Selection)

2023 (with Sumeet Mhaskar). ‘Wake up for Education’: Colonialism, Social Transformation, and the Beginnings of the Anti-Caste Movement in India. Paedagogica Historica 59 (4): 30-48. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2021.1920986

2021. Montessori for All? Indian Experiments in ‘Child Education’, 1920s-1970s. Comparative Education 57 (3): 322-240. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2021.1888408

2017 (with Sumeet Mhaskar). Bildung und politische Mobilisierung im kolonialen Indien. Die Anti-Kasten-Bewegung in Maharashtra, 1848-1882. ZeitschriftfürPädagogik63 (5): 561-581.

2010 (with Maria Framke): Umstrittene Geschichte. (Anti-)Faschismus und (Anti-) Kolonialismus in Indien. In Prokla 40 (158): 67–83. https://doi.org/10.32387/prokla.v40i158.401

2008. Diffusing Useful Knowledge: The Monitorial System of Education in Madras, London and Bengal, 1789 – 1840. Paedagogica Historica 44 (3): 245–264. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230802041526

Book Chapters (Selection)

2024 (forthcoming). Contested Equality. Co-Parenting, Child Welfare, and Gender Politics in Contemporary History. In John, Mary, Barbara Lotz, and Schömbucher-Kusterer, Elisabeth, eds. Querying Childhood. Feminist Reframings. Routledge.

2020. Knowledge, Media and Communications. In Ellis, Heather, ed. A Cultural History of EducationinintheAgeofEmpire. London: Bloomsbury (A Cultural History of Education, 5).

2020 (with Cornelia Möser). De l'Etat socialiste à l'Etat capitaliste. Entretien avec Karin Alexander et Dorothea Dornhof. In Möser, Cornelia, and Marion Tillousn, eds. Avec,sans ou contre. Critiques queer/féministes de l'Etat. Paris : iXe.

2019. Training a Servant Class: Gender, Poverty and Domestic Labour in Early Nineteenth Century Educational Sources. In Sinha, Nitin and Nitin Varma, eds. Servants'Pasts, Vol. 2. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan.

2018. Women and Education Reform in Colonial India: Trans-regional and Intersectional Perspectives. In Lerp, Dörte, and Ulrike Lindner, eds. New Perspectives on Gender and Empire. London: Bloomsbury.

2014. A Colonial Experiment in Education: Madras, 1789-1796. In Bagchi, Barnita, Eckhardt Fuchs, and Kate Rousmaniere, eds. Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational Exchanges and Cross-Cultural Transfers. London: Bergbahn Books.

2014 (with Michael Maschke). Von der Philologie zur Gesellschaftswissenschaft? Berliner Südasienforschung in der Zeit der DDR. In: Framke, Maria, Hannelore Lötzke and Ingo Strauch, eds. Indologie und Südasienforschung in Berlin: Geschichte und Positionsbestimmung, Berlin: trafo-Verlag.

2013. Schulreform im imperialen Bildungsraum. Das Modell des wechselseitigen Unterrichts in Indien und Großbritannien. In Möller, Esther, and Johannes Wischmeyer, eds. Transnationale Bildungsräume: Wissenstransfers im Schnittfeld von Kultur, Politik und Religion, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

2012. Intersectionality, Feminist Theory, and Global History. In Kallenberg, Vera, Jennifer Meyer, and Johanna M. Müller, eds. Intersectionality und Kritik. Neue Perspektiven auf alte Fragen. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

2011. Incorporation and Differentiation: Popular Education and the Civilizing Mission in the Early Nineteenth Century India. In Mann, Michael, and Carey Watt, eds. Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia. From Improvement to Development, London: Anthem Press.

2004. Between Non-interference in Matters of Religion and Civilizing Mission: The Prohibition of Suttee in 1829. In Fischer-Tiné, Harald and Michael Mann, eds. Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India, London: Anthem Press.