The School of Liberal Studies, BML Munjal University, offers its students a new experience – hitherto not offered to University undergraduate students in India. The experience is titled Immersion, and it needs to be distinguished from two of its close kin: internship and fieldwork.

In an internship, the student chooses the institution or organisation where she wishes to intern. Internships are usually short, lasting between 1 and 2 months. The Immersion site, on the other hand, is not chosen by the student. It will be offered to the student as a site of experience, and the student shall be immersed at the site (as much as possible) without pre-determined theories or conceptual priori-s.

In fieldwork, the research question is set beforehand. Based on the research question one looks for an appropriate field. In Immersion, the student does not go to the immersion site with a pre-determined research question. The research question emerges from the context, from lifeworlds and life stories and is informed by the worldview of the community at the immersion site.

In addition to gathering knowledge from the below, we also envision doing a transformative praxis – however micro- however limited. Our Immersion pedagogy thus brings to dialogue the questions of knowing and doing as well as questions of knowing and ‘being’. One faces questions like, who am I? How privileged am I? What is marginality? What is social disadvantage? What are the kinds of marginality and disadvantages at work in my immersion site? How is it different from the kind of privileges I have? Are there unexpected rhythms of joy, togetherness, sharing, interdependence, care, concern, and co-living? Inculcating such self-awareness within the community of scholars remains an important objective at SOLS.

Students at SoLS explore Immersive pedagogy throughout their 4 years of journey. The Immersion module is in sync with the larger requirements of the SoLS credit framework. The flagship interdisciplinary minors like Data and measurement, Child and Youth Study or Human Ecology are based on immersion pedagogy. Similarly, courses like Engaging Diversity are also based on immersive pedagogy.