Dr Umesh Kumar
Nominated Fellow, November 2025 - January 2026 (previously British Council’s Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at IASH: 2019-20)
Home Institution: Banaras Hindu University, India
Email: umeshkumareng@bhu.ac.in
Personal web page: https://www.umeshkumar.info/
Umesh Kumar is a Visiting Scholar (November 2025 – November 2026) at the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh, and teaches English and Translation Studies at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), India. An early-career academic and emerging literary translator, he works at the intersections of modern Hindi and Marathi literature, translation, and cultural studies.
He translates between Hindi-English and Marathi-English, seeking to bring ‘regional’ voices into wider circulation and dialogue. Educated and trained at leading institutions in India and abroad—including the University of Pune, the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Ahmedabad University, the University of East Anglia (UK), and the NIDA School of Translation Studies in Italy—Umesh was previously a British Council Charles Wallace Visiting Fellow at the IASH, University of Edinburgh (2019–20).
He has actively contributed to the growing visibility of Hindi and Marathi literature in English through his translations and critical writings. His work has appeared in Translation Today, Contemporary Voice of Dalit (Sage), The Book Review, Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), The Hindu, and with publishers such as Routledge, Sage, and Vani Prakashan.
Project: Translating Voices of Resistance: Gender, Society, and Identity in the Stories of Sobati, Priyamvada, and Bhandari
As a nominated fellow at IASH, Dr Umesh Kumar will work on his project, Translating Voices of Resistance: Gender, Society, and Identity in the Stories of Sobati, Priyamvada, and Bhandari. His research focuses on translating and critically examining select short stories by Krishna Sobati, Usha Priyamvada, and Mannu Bhandari—three major Hindi writers who powerfully articulated women’s experiences in post-independence India. Through this work, Dr Kumar explores how these authors negotiate questions of gender, identity, and social change, while reimagining the role of women as active agents within patriarchal structures. The project also reflects on translation as a transformative act, engaging with its cultural and political implications. By bringing these important yet underrepresented voices to an English-speaking audience, Dr Kumar aims to contribute to global conversations in gender studies, postcolonial literature, and translation studies.