The Alliance School of Liberal Arts recently hosted an intellectually rich guest lecture titled “Open, Closed, and Interrupted City: City-Walking and Psychiatry at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Migration.” The talk was delivered by the esteemed Prof. (Dr.) Ankhi Mukherjee, Full Professor of English and World Literatures at the University of Oxford, whose research bridges literary studies, psychiatry, and postcolonial theory.

Chairing the event was Dr. Arindam Das, Professor and Ph.D. Program Director at Alliance University, who steered the thought-provoking session with keen insight and academic depth.

Bringing together faculty, post-doctoral researchers, doctoral scholars, and students, the lecture offered a compelling re‑visioning of the city—not as a neutral backdrop, but as a space structured by overlapping inequalities. Prof. Mukherjee posited that public spaces and psychiatric discourses have historically been entwined with mechanisms that restrict and pathologize the bodies of migrants and working-class individual.

A central theme was the notion of city-walking as both survival and resistance. Mukherjee portrayed walking through urban spaces as a method of mapping exclusion, challenging boundaries, and asserting presence—thus transforming an everyday activity into a political and epistemological act.

The session concluded with a lively discussion and Q&A moderated by Dr. Das. Attendees engaged deeply on topics like urban design, surveillance, mental health, and spatial justice—leaving with renewed insights into how cities are lived, experienced, and contested.

Following the lecture, Prof. Mukherjee recorded a podcast with Dr. Das at the University’s Media Lab and met with the Office of International Affairs to explore future collaboration opportunities between Oxford University and Alliance University.