Sarojini Sapru
sarojini sapru
About Me
I am a current PhD Student at UCL Geography (2022 -2025). My research focuses on the relationship between hiphop, masculinities, and youth aspirations in Delhi. The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) UBEL-DTP studentship. My primary supervisor is Dr. Andrew Harris, and my secondary supervisor is Dr. Pushpa Arabindoo.
I hold a BA in Political Science and Religious Studies (2017) from Grinnell College, and an MSc in Contemporary India Studies from SOAS, University of London. After graduating in 2018, I worked with various organisations in the development sector. My professional interests centred on co-creating learning and evaluation frameworks through participatory mechanisms with young people — those directly impacted by the programmes we were working on.
I am passionate about centring this same approach in my doctoral project — ensuring that the outputs that I produce are translatable beyond academia, and are engaging and accessible to the communities and organisations I will engage in my project and beyond.
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Proposed Project
Through my project, I explore the ways in which young men and women in use hiphop as a means to fashion their gendered identities and express their aspirations. I ask questions from and within Delhi with the aim of understanding of how young people interact with the project of the world-class city. I explore in-between spaces that problematise the the study of Delhi as elite (residents of gated colonies) versus urban poor (slum-dwellers). Studying the city as a mosaic, I use the project as a means to understand the aspirations of urban youth in the city — asking how the city shapes their artistic project, but also how their words and music shape the city.
