Learn, Reflect, Practise

Field research and experiences of MA in Development students

Field practice-MADEV

Field Practice forms an integral part of the MA in Development programme. It seeks to complement the students’ learnings in the classroom and offers opportunities for engaging with diverse kinds of development action spaces as sites of knowledge, experience, and imagination. Along with relating concepts, ideas and theories with practical realities, Field engagements help students gain practical experience and develop confidence and abilities to imagine their own ideas and interventions.

Students are expected to spend extended periods of time in the Field in the form of Community Learning and Reflection (CLR), a Summer Field Internship, and a Winter Field Project (WFP). 

Offering opportunities for engaging with diverse kinds of development action spaces as sites of knowledge, experience, and imagination.

Where learning is deepened through sustained field engagement

Students, in small groups, immerse themselves in a community for two weeks to observe and understand the social, cultural, economic, ecological and political systems, and how these interface with and shape a community. 

Students become a part of development organisations and participate as active members of specific development interventions for a period of 6 weeks. 

An independent project that is conceptualised and designed by students, under the supervision of faculty mentors. It is a 30-week project across the third and the fourth semesters, with an intensive 8‑week field engagement during the semester break. 

Students undertake these projects in the form of  field research studies, documentation of best practices and processes, pilot interventions, and field-based videos or photo stories. 
 

Winter Field Project 2025

Waqar (MA in Development, 2023 – 25) reflects on the journey of his project, carried out in Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) with a focus on Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh. Working in a region that spans the fragile interface between forests, farms, and villages, Waqar’s research examines the lived realities of human – wildlife conflict in Terai. 

Domestic Dalit Women Workers

Shweta Pagare (MA in Development, 2023 – 25) reflects on her project, which examined paid domestic work through the lens of caste, gender, and everyday discrimination.

Indigenous Ecological and Environmental Education

Vikrant (MA in Development, 2023 – 25) shares his experience from an immersive field practice undertaken in the villages around the Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh.

Glimpses from the Field Project Fair 2025, held after students’ return from field projects: 

Students’ publications based on field studies and experiences:

News Articles

Journal Article

Rhea Kaikobad, in Women & Therapy, discusses an intervention for rehabilitation of female survivors of violence that reconceptualises rehabilitation through a feminist lens: the Sampoornata model of Dance Movement Therapy (DMT), created and being practiced by an NGO called Kolkata Sanved in Kolkata, India.

Read here →

Attribution