About
Bhavika Sachan is a doctoral researcher in the Department of English at the University of Southampton, funded by the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership (SWWDTP), with the University of Exeter as her co-institution. Her PhD project broadly examines how comics and graphic narratives from Northeast India function as archives that preserve oral narratives, indigenous identities, embodied and cultural memory through the interplay of image and text.
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Comics Studies
- Memory Studies
- Oral Histories
- Postcolonial Studies
- Trauma Studies
Research projects
Active projects
Publications
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
Bhavika's research engages with comics studies, visual culture, and postcolonial memory studies, with particular attention to how graphic narratives document lived histories, trauma, and regional forms of storytelling. Her academic work on caste in visual culture and memory in the poetry of Mamang Dai has appeared in peer-reviewed journals. She is also the co-author of the graphic novella, The Abyss: Women, Memory and Space.
Beyond her doctoral research, Bhavika has undertaken fieldwork in oral history and archival documentation with The Remnant Archive, contributing to an Oral History Project on the Tibetan refugee community at Majnu ka Tilla in New Delhi. She currently serves as Co-General Editor of Question Journal, an interdisciplinary journal supported by the SWWDTP.
Prior to joining the University of Southampton, Bhavika completed her MA in English at the University of Delhi, where she developed her interest in visual narratives and cultural representation. She has also qualified the UGC-NET examination in India, making her eligible for Assistant Professorship nationally. Alongside her academic work, her creative writing has appeared in Aster Lit, Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine, Prologue, and Science Reporter, among others.
Prizes
- Speaker of the Month (May 2025) (2025)
- First Prize in Science Fiction Competition (2023)
- National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) (2024)
- Best Creative Writing Prize: "Gender and Mythology" (2021)
- Runner-up in Creative Writing Competition, "Magical Realism" (2021)
- National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) - India (2024)