Biography

Dr. Sahana V. Rajan is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Senior Associate Dean (Dean's Office) at Jindal Global Business School (JGBS). She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Delhi, where she also completed her M.Phil., M.A., and B.A. (St. Stephen's College). Her research investigates relational ontologies - philosophical frameworks that challenge the assumption that subjects, minds, and differences are pre-given, arguing instead that they emerge through entangled material, discursive, and affective practices. This commitment to relationality is the thread that runs through her work across new materialism, critical neurodiversity studies, Buddhist psychology, and care ethics.

Drawing primarily on Karen Barad's agential realism, Dr. Rajan's current research brings new materialist ontology into conversation with critical neurodiversity studies, questioning deficit-based and representationalist approaches to autism and cognitive difference. She extends this inquiry through Buddhist psychology - particularly the concepts of dependent origination and non-self - to rethink assumptions about bounded selfhood that underpin both mainstream cognitive science and conventional disability frameworks. Her earlier work on care ethics in higher education examined the undervaluation of faculty service as academic carework, developing care-centric decision-making frameworks for faculty administrators.

As an autistic academic, Dr. Rajan's scholarly and lived commitments are deeply intertwined. She is the Associate Director of the Centre for Neurodiversity Studies at JGU, where she works toward neurodiversity-inclusive pedagogy and institutional practice. Her teaching - spanning courses in critical thinking, and leadership philosophy - reflects a learner-centred, care-oriented approach shaped by the conviction that philosophical inquiry is most alive when it is rooted in embodied, relational experience.