Conducting fieldwork in Social Science

Rumya Putcha, jointly appointed faculty in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music and the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies, has developed a career based on understanding her role as a social science researcher.

A terrific feature from UGA Research Communications unpacks her approach and the rewarding career she in the process of building:

Over her decades-long career studying the role of music in international cultures, that question has been an ever-present motivator in understanding the power dynamics of research: Who gets to study whom? With what assumptions? And under what ethical obligations?

Music and dance came naturally to Putcha. Growing up in Houston, she learned Euro-American performance styles in school. She sang in choir, learned viola, and remained musically active throughout her life, even working as a professional soprano during graduate school.

For many Indian American families like hers, however, the arts provided a way to pass down cultural identity that public school systems often didn’t reflect.

“There were very few public spaces where the Indian community could raise its young people to understand their culture,” Putcha said.

Many young women like Putcha were encouraged to learn dance up to a certain age as a means of cultural continuity. She described it as a “double life”—she embraced both the Indian performance art she learned in local after-school programs and the Euro-American styles she learned at school.

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Image: Rumya Putcha (Photo by Chamberlain Smith)