About Me

Professor Malashri Lal is an academic, writer, editor and anthologist, well known for her work on women, literature and culture. Herstrong support for women’s issues has extended from grassroots to board rooms. During her decades of teaching and academic administration at the University of Delhi, she pioneered several initiatives in pedagogy for women’s studies and demonstrated the vital link between academic learning and field activity. Books and monographs explored subjects such as the Girl Child, Home, Oral narratives of women, Indian writing in English, Indian mythology among others. She held a leadership role in educational innovations at the University of Delhi on several programmes. A popular speaker and book reviewer, Malashri Lal is kept busy with international panels and literature festivals, bringing to them a deep perception of women in India. As endorsements of her vast contribution, Malashri Lal has received several awards, the latest being the prestigious Maharani Gayatri Devi Award for Women’s Excellence, 2022.

Professor of English at the University of Delhi, Malashri Lal retired from her positions as the Dean of Colleges, Dean, Academic Activities & Projects, and Chair of the Research Council at the same university. Previously she was also Director of Women’s Studies and Development Centre and during her tenure several projects were undertaken in collaboration with UNIFEM and the British Council.

International Women’s Day Celebration, Women’s Studies and Development Centre, University of Delhi, 2015

As a recipient of prestigious fellowships, she has conducted research in Harvard University, USA, Bellagio, Italy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and Newcastle, UK. Focusing on literature for social change, Malashri Lal’s specialization is in Literature, Women and Gender Studies about which she has 16 books including The Law of the Threshold: Women Writers in Indian English, (IIAS, Shimla, rpt 2000), In Search of Sita: Revisiting Mythology (co-author NamitaGokhale. Published by Penguin 2009, 2018), Tagore and the Feminine: A Journey in Translation (Sage 2015), Cosmopolitan Spaces and Counterpoints of Modernity (Sahitya Akademi 2018), Finding Radha: The Quest for Love (co-author NamitaGokhale. Published by Penguin, 2018), and the latest, Betrayed by Hope: A Play on the Life of Michael MadhusudanDutt(co-author NamitaGokhale. Published by HarperCollins 2020).

Malashri Lal, 2021

Book Launch of Gender and Diversity, 2015

As a creative writer, Malashri Lal’s poems, stories and translations have been published in Indian Literature, Confluence, The Beacon, online portals and anthologies in the USA and in India.Betrayed by Hope: A Paly on the life of MichaelMadududanDutt, co-authored with NamitaGokhale, won the Kalinga Fiction Book of the Year Award 2020-21, and its script on StorytelAudiobooks has the famous actors Victor Banerjee and Sushmita Sen playing the parts of Madhusudan and the Sutradhar. Lal has served as a member of international and national book award juries such as the Commonwealth Writers Prize, London, the DSC South Asia Literary Prize, London and India, The Hindu Literary Prize, Crossword Book Award, The Sushila Devi Book Award for Women, among others.
Malashri Lal was a member on the Jnanpith Advisory Committee for English, and currently, she is a Member of the English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi. In these capacities she has been deeply engaged with the global literary culture. She is the founder of Shyamoli Cultural Series which presents writers to audiences in Jaipur, and supports Poetry Under the Pilkhan tree, a poetry group that meets in Delhi.

Malashri Lal has been a Senior Consultant to the Ministry of Culture during the 150th year celebration of Rabindranath Tagore. She serves on the advisory committees of several universities and the prestigious journals—The Journal of Commonwealth Literature UK) and Gitanjali and Beyond (Edinburgh). She is a popular speaker and moderator at literary events such as the Jaipur Literature Festival, the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival and the Sahitya Akademi’sprogrammes.

Along with the literary and cultural work, Malashri Lal is Vice President and Executive committee member of the Guild of Service, a national developmental NGO holding a consultative status with ECOSOC of the United Nations. She assists women’s empowerment through educationalprogrammes in Rajasthan and is also the Secretary General of SANWED, a South Asian alliance head-quartered at New Delhi at present. Among other recognitions, Malashri Lal recently received the Maharani Gayatri Devi Award for Women’s Excellence, 2022.