24/08/2025
Introducing our Campus Ambassador, CFSR.
Rubaiya Nasrin is a PhD Research Scholar in the Department of English at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She is pursuing her doctoral thesis on Margaret Atwood, with a focus on human rights and posthumanism. In 2019, she qualified for the NTA NET with a Junior Research Fellowship.
Her journey, however, began far earlier. An alumna of the prestigious Al-Ameen Mission, Khalatpur, Rubaiya first walked the path of science—studying Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematics—yet her heart sought refuge elsewhere. If science were her discipline, stories were her sanctuary. From childhood, Bengali literature was her constant companion: the enchanted lullabies of Thakumar Jhuli, the moral whispers of the Panchatantra, the playful tricks of Hada Bhoda and Nonte Fonte, the adventures of Pandob Goyenda, the sharp wit of Chacha Chaudhary. These tales were not mere books but lifelong friends, shaping the rhythm of her imagination. For Rubaiya, literature has never been confined to the page. She grew up reading the humanist tales of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, laughing at the playful nonsense of Sukumar Ray, and wandering through the magical worlds of Satyajit Ray. The sharp intellect of Byomkesh Bakshi, the scientific wonder of Professor Shonku, and the colourful imagination of Narayan Debnath’s comics remain integral to her sense of cultural belonging. These voices shaped not only her love for books but also her vision of storytelling as a bridge between memory, imagination, and identity.
Literature became her sanctuary, guiding her toward English Honours at Victoria Institution College under the University of Calcutta(2015), where she also studied Journalism for two years. She later completed her Master’s in English from West Bengal State University (2017). She pursued training in Desktop Publishing at Brainware Institute in 2014, nurturing her parallel interests in translation, editing, publishing, and journalism.
Her heart goes out most deeply to children and animals—figures who often remain on the margins, yet who embody the purest truths of compassion and imagination. She wishes to explore these areas further in her work, where literature, folklore, and film converge to give voice to innocence, wonder, and empathy. Her academic journey reflects this passion. She has presented and published papers on films that engage with folklore, childhood, animals, and the supernatural, exploring how cinema transforms old tales into new cultural expressions.
Rubaiya has presented papers at Banaras Hindu University, the University of Hyderabad, St. Xavier’s University (Kolkata), Christ University (Bangalore), and Visva-Bharati University, with her work also accepted at IIT Roorkee and IIT Hyderabad
Deeply drawn to audiovisual media, she studies how film and visual narratives carry folklore across generations, preserving its essence while giving it fresh meaning in contemporary contexts. As a Campus Ambassador for the Centre for Folklore Studies and Research (CFSR), Rubaiya seeks to bring together her academic grounding and her personal love for folklore, literature, and the living world. She hopes to contribute to conversations that preserve folk traditions, honour the presence of children and animals within them, and explore how these narratives find renewed life in cinema, digital culture, and contemporary storytelling.
