The bridge programme is an important activity of the Advanced Centre for Women's Studies. With committed students from different regions of the country and different social strata, the bridge programme seeks to bridge the gap between English and other regional languages in social sciences' teaching and learning processes. The bridge programme will build on some work already done in the ACWS. We held workshops in which students were invited to translate texts from English into Marathi and other Indian languages, as well as vice versa. There was also a workshop aiming to examine existing and generate new conceptual terms in the area of Gender Studies in different languages. We also regularly conduct bilingual and sometimes multilingual conversations in the classroom.

The bridge programme proposed here has the following components: translation of scholarly papers and important texts with commentary; transcription of lectures and presentations from past workshops organised by the ACWS and editing of a collection for publication; bringing in key texts generated in grey feminist organisational spaces for translation into English and one other language; organising workshops for students to discuss theoretical terminology and dialogue with Indian-language counterparts; also to explore how students’ observations and experiences of the world around them can be brought into enhancing academic knowledge; and building up a body of multilingual publications that can be used in teaching and by students for research.

Bridge programme aims to create a democratic knowledge practice and process within the interdisciplinary location of Women's Studies, for which we need to understand and acknowledge the diversity related to languages, regions and social locations.