Smriti Verma - University of Oxford

I recently taught 1:1 tutorials on Life-writing, Indian Postcolonial Literature and Contemporary Literature to visiting students as part of the Williams-Exeter Program at Oxford (WEPO), St Catherine’s College, and Hertford College’s Visiting Students Programme respectively for Trinity Term 2025. These were once a week, for eight weeks, and sometimes biweekly. I taught Literature in English: 1910-Present day to first-year undergraduates in English at Pembroke College as part of the Teaching and Mentoring Scheme (TMS) as a mentee with Dr. Ushashi Dasgupta in Hilary Term 2025 to a classroom of 8 students. I also worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for undergraduate FHS Special Options Paper 6 titled “Writing Lives”, convened by Dr. Robert Douglas Fairhurst and Dr. Ushashi Dasgupta for a classroom of 15 students. I'm also working as a dissertation supervisor for an undergraduate thesis by a B.A. History and English student on Joan Didion’s works. In the past academic year (2023-24), I've tutored visiting students for 1:1 tutorials at Brasenose College and Hertford College, for the modules of Postcolonial Literature and 21st Century British Asian Women’s Fiction in the UK respectively as part of the Visiting Students’ Programme in Hilary Term of 2024. I also tutored a visiting student at Worcester College for the module of Memory Studies in Trinity Term of 2024. I am also working as a Mentor with EduAccess, which is an organisation for mentoring students from marginalised and low-income communities in the Global South on their applications for international admissions. As part of the role, I had to build relationships with my mentees over months, give them welfare and pastoral advice as they worked on their applications, and engage in community-building. Prior to this, I worked as a Teaching Assistant during my Master's in English at Shiv Nadar University from September 2020 to May 2022 to classrooms of 20-30 students. I worked as a TA for the papers “Drama: Tropes and Adaptations”, “Introduction to Feminist Theory” and “Fundamentals of Creative Writing”, and tutored first-year, third-year and fourth-year B.A. (Research) English students. I prepared and conducted weekly tutorials with the students on course materials, often through presentations, class discussions, and writing exercises. I further assisted the professor with class management, attendance, and any other requirements. From November 2018 to August 2020, I worked as a Poetry Fellow as part of the Jijivisha Fellowship by a Delhi-based NGO Slam Out Loud, in which I organized bimonthly poetry sessions for students from low-income underprivileged communities, and facilitated exploration of arts education, poetry as craft, and inculcation of creative confidence. I worked with 7th and 8th grade students, in public schools in communities of Shahdara and Shiv Vihar in Delhi by designing my own syllabus.