“At university, I realised my place in the world in a way that I simply did not have any knowledge of,” says Stuti Pachisia, supervisor and PhD candidate in English Literature at Selwyn College, “or, if I had knowledge of it, it was purely academic,” she goes on, “not really at a deeply affective personal register – how I am complicit, or my heritage is complicit, in marginalisation.” Our conversation often returns to these ideas around the complexities of higher education access. Having been taught by Stuti, I am eager to talk to her about these issues and her personal relationship with academia and media.

Speaking about her undergraduate education at Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi, Stuti prefaces her words with the disclaimer that “I was somebody who benefitted a lot from my class, caste, and religious position in India.” I ask if there are economic differences between the Indian and British university systems: “It was heavily subsidised and much more affordable,” she replies thoughtfully and explains that the barrier to entry was very high, which “meant that it tried to build a bit of a quasi-meritocracy, but there was a great amount of correlation with the class or caste of people who went there – they were often upper class because they had all the privileges in the world to actually have time to study in a way that would allow them to go there.”

“I think I owe a lot of why college was really great, or a space of incredible intellectual learning, to people who traditionally have not been represented in spaces like the one that I went to”

Our conversation turns to the case of Rohith Vermula, a young Indian scholar who tragically took his own life due to casteism experienced as a PhD student at the University of Hyderabad in 2016. “That rallied student activism around universities. A lot of upper-class people were also being made to reflect on their position in this marginalisation.”

For the most part, she speaks lovingly about her experience at Lady Shri Ram College. I ask what left her with this impression. “I think I owe a lot of why college was really great, or a space of incredible intellectual learning, to people who traditionally have not been represented in spaces like the one that I went to,” she replies. “I ended up learning outside class as much as I did in class.”

After graduating, Stuti moved to study comparative literature at SOAS, London. “I truly loved that experience and had a great time in London, but again, I think one of the sad parts of going to a place like SOAS is that you’re incredibly aware of how the neo-liberalisation of education affects universities. SOAS really drove home the fact that the point of university is not necessarily to graduate with a high-paying job, but really to go to a space and meet people that go beyond your own remit of social class and space, to talk to them and to learn more about the world that you live in.” I laugh – despite the seriousness of the conversation, I can’t help but think this is the justification I give cynical people who ask why I chose an English Literature degree given its (perceived) limited career opportunities. “It, unfortunately, tends to become a sort of idealistic outcome simply because of how expensive it can be to go to university and how that limits who has access to it […] if your education outcomes are not necessarily tied to making money and your access to education isn’t either […] the way that you will engage with a space of learning [will be different].”

“For me, writing is very much confronting my own feelings, and academia is confronting my own thoughts”

I ask her what she thinks the future of higher education is, especially with regards to institutions based on a heightened meritocracy like Cambridge: “I think, in some ways, universities are always slightly ahead of the curve of what society is broadly thinking at the time. This may be my most favourable review of universities in general! Another interpretation is that I think universities are very much representative of the society they’re in. They’re not above it; if we want to have some sort of utopia, I think it’s not unreasonable to already imagine some of those aspects [exist here already].”

Stuti is in the process of completing a PhD looking at digital protest text: “I’m trying to form poetics for the way we think about the idea of digital protests and, as an extension, how much the text influences or our perceptions or methods of protesting and protest culture. It’s looking at a bunch of things, including ideas of embodiment and ephemerality.” I ask whether the creative work she pursues (she was a finalist for the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize in 2020 and longlisted for the Thawra prize this year) and her academic projects are interlinked. Interestingly, she sees the two as entirely different. “For me, writing is very much confronting my own feelings, and academia is confronting my own thoughts.”

Nearing the end of our conversation, I push her to name a novel she’d urge everyone to read. She names Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. I ask for her favourite Richard Siken poem, aware she’s a huge fan. “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out is absolutely my favourite because it made me feel incredibly seen as a seventeen-year-old,” she replies fondly. “I remember writing it out by hand and hanging it in my undergraduate room.” The cyclical nature of our discussion strikes me; this final anecdote proves the indelible mark art and education leave on a person’s psyche.