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Nandini Gooptu wins Teaching Excellence Award

Warm congratulations to Professor Nandini Gooptu, who has been awarded a Teaching Excellence Award for excellence in supervision.

The awards recognise the exceptional contributions to education by colleagues across the Social Sciences Division.

"Graduate supervision is the most rewarding part of my work,” Professor Gooptu said. “My students never cease to inspire me with their intellectual vigour, energy and enthusiasm. Each one in their unique way has enriched my own thinking and scholarship. This award is a tribute to their achievements and excellence."

Professor Gooptu is Associate Professor of South Asian Studies at ODID. Her career as a doctoral supervisor is highly unusual in its scale, diversity and intellectual depth. She has supervised some 44 students from a dozen countries, across four departments and multiple disciplines.

Her core supervisory work has focused on South Asian history, politics and development, and especially cities, labour and work, but it has ranged far more widely. Her students have won many scholarships and prizes and the great majority have gone on to academic careers at universities around the world. They have shaped the department as teaching assistants and through their diverse contributions to academic life, and they have shaped their research fields through the publication of articles and monographs.

In their testimonies about her, Professor Gooptu’s students emphasise the confidence and the skills she has given them to pursue their intellectual interests with rigour and excitement, her creation of community, and her combination of generosity and sharp critique.

"Many congratulations to all of this year's recipients of the Teaching Excellence Awards,” Professor Timothy Power, Head of the Social Sciences Division, said. “I am thrilled to see the outstanding work of our talented colleagues across the division being recognised in this way, and I extend my gratitude to them and to all of our staff who contribute to our exceptional educational offering."

The awards are presented in four categories:

  • Early Career Awards recognise staff who have shown high levels of innovation and expertise in teaching at an early career stage.
  • Individual or Team Awards are presented to outstanding academic staff or teams who teach undergraduate or graduate students.
  • Excellence in Supervision Awards recognise the outstanding achievements of academic staff who undertake DPhil supervision.
  • Achievement Awards are presented to individuals who have demonstrated high quality and sustained commitment to education.