Dr Louks revealed that her thesis, titled "Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose," focused on exploring the politics of scent within literature. According to Dr Louks, her research studied how the language of smell and its imaginative representation in literature help structure social dynamics, including gender, race, class, and even species power structures.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/cambridge-teacher-earns-phd-with-thesis-on-politics-of-smell-leaves-internet-divided-101733109428197.html

Please tell me how studying politics of smell in novels contributes in any substantial way toward improving the world. We do not need to ape every aspect of western education. We can learn from them how to enforce rigor and integrity in law schools. At the same time we should avoid the overproduction of elites who do not study anything of substance and only enter academia to lead subsidised lives and cater to more and more esoteric academic interests. All the while driving up the cost of education. We have enough real problems in our country that deserve attention in academia we do not need to encourage our brightest minds to study intersectional queer theory in underwater basket weaving.

In fact, someone at JNU did a PhD on Savita Bhabhi (desi cartoon soft porn character) and infused it with generous amounts of criticism of capitalism, the BJP, upper castes, the middle class, bourgeoisie etc. And all the key buzzwords like patriarchy, subaltern, Foucault etc.

I kid you not. Please Google. Just sums up the state of humanities academia.

Not, OP but I can tell you. I actually read the abstract to understand why it is important, which I am sure you did not.

When I say 'sit your curry ass down' to win an argument, you need to study why 'curry smell' is a derogatory word and how it has been used to entrench power. Let me even tell you its relevance in law: criminal sentencing, prejudice and the like. Judges, and to a larger extent police, many times, rely on appearance (and smell) for subconscious culpability (and this is well-researched). Bringing to light underlying biases helps improve society, and in fact, your life. Smell, as she also points out, was also an important factor in the civilizing mission of colonization, used to justify, e.g., why Indians are savages and need the British to civilize these backward people. The politics of smell is extremely important precisely because it seems banal and yes is a critical tool for projecting power hierarchies. The entirety of the Western World used it, including to undermine Mahatma Gandhi and other important Indian political figures during calls for decolonization. That power dynamic carries on today, as she demonstrates.

And yes, that is why, I agree with the OP that Indian academia is generally screwed. In any case, Indian academia does not care right? Which is why Cambridge took this PhD, not IIM-A, which is great, but may I also know which great scientific invention has been coming out of India with this pissing match between STEM and other disciplines?

Do you think a study on costs of sparks on train tracks can be useful? By your metric not, but unfortunately for you, that won Coase a Nobel Prize in economics.

A PhD may seem to make a simple point but has to make that point under thorough standards of excellence and rigour. These are no joke, especially in good Western institutions. Most of humanity's progress, whether in STEM or otherwise has come from research like this in these institutions. I think they know what they are doing.

I see - how about completely hypothetical mathematical equations, which most mathematics PhDs are comprised of? Or most of theoretical physics? Which also have little application as on the date of their PhD. Would you, for example, say that maths PhDs are elitist overproduction? Because for the most part, they have zero application in the real world.

Are you seriously comparing a PhD in theoretical physics with a PhD on SMELL in LITERATURE and how smell is apparently a colonial/patriarchal construct or whatever??? Are you serious????

Bro, theoretical physics lays foundations for practical experiments that can revolutionise mankind. Case in point: Peter Higgs did a PhD from Kings College London that led to the discover of the Higgs Boson 50 years later.

So can such research, in this age of hate, where 'body odor' is used in a negative context, and almost akin to an insult, not realizing that there are various parts of the world where people do carry body odor, and though they are used to it, it's still unhealthy and damaging, and without any doubt, must have had a significant impact on Labor Productivity.

Good Luck, convincing Governments across the world getting fund for establishing a 'Centre for Diffusion Theory of Innovation, Technology and Social Systems' but had you spent a day in formal academic circles of repute, you would've understood how important it is to understand the value chain innovative practices, products and principles create, and why they MUST be studied, I believe it's similar with Literature, the Author is more than capable to recognize the effect 'Smell' has had in Literature, an example is, use of these words in a negative context against Minorities to initiate a sense of alienation, and slowly corner them in all aspects of their socio-political and socio-economic life, this has been the case with so many minorities across the world, may it been the Depressed Classes of India, or The Afro-Americans in Northern America, The Jews back in the day, it's more than important to study this, but hey, this one uneducated, good for nothing, LI contributor thinks she's useless, whilst he went to NLU 'No-Placement-But-High-Fee' Nagar.

It's good that people like you are daring enough to show their ridiculous and callous views on others' scholarly work so openly, only shows how dwarf they are in any sort of understanding.

There's a Reddit thread with the title: What's the deal with the "olfactory ethics" girl? (Dr. Ally Louks)

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1h62ch0/whats_the_deal_with_the_olfactory_ethics_girl_dr/

Here are some interesting comments in her defence:

A woman wrote a thesis on how smell effects culture and Twitter decided that she had “gone woke” and was too pretentious to say “people don’t like things that smell bad”.

Much of the anti-woke crowd probably makes jokes and complains about certain ethnic groups being smelly and not using deodorant.

she's being attacked by people on the right as an example of how useless and esoteric higher ed can be, and also for not having kids and other sexist attacks.

The topic of her PhD was widely mocked for being perceived as too "woke" by many users on Twitter / X, particularly anti-intellectuals, who believed that the study was useless and a waste of time and resources.

No one is saying one should do away with novels. Human beings making and buying books is good for the economy and literacy is good for people. What one is saying, quite clearly, is that not every phd in humanities studying these

novels is actually worthwhile or useful. This is a person who received funding and subsidies through her life to study this, she now has a job where she’s paid quite well because she wrote this inane nonsense. Surely Cambridge can spend their money more wisely. People can still love novels and write book reviews. It’s just nonsense that there is such a wide gulf between what’s required to get a phd in economics and to get a phd in English.

No the tragedy is you think it’s fine for humanities phds to be held to a lower standard. They need not be. I can think of any number of topics in English lit that could use better exploration. But if you’re at the point where we’re taking about smell in relatively recent novels - that’s obviously overproduction.

Isn't it Cambridge's money to begin with? She showed how the use of 'smell' is essentially a tool for all privileged folks to de-sensitize the lives of many who have been subject to such insults, ofcourse you don't have a clue about it, coz other than maybe reading the first two pages of Avtar Singh's Partnership Law ( which is a classic now for most Law students, except they go for rattafication ), you haven't read shit in your life, you don't even know the impact Literature has had in so many historical moments, especially with vilification of minorities, religious, social and economic ( immigrants etc. ), you don't even know how Canterbury Tales of all texts is credited with deep-rooted Antisemitism, how seemingly harmless authors like Roald Dahl have also contributed to Anti-Semitism, and let's talk about Economics if you want to, I am pretty sure you haven't read what a lot of Economists write to this day, a lot of it has quantitative reasoning, but it has qualitative nuance to it as well, especially the Neoliberal School of Economics has brought back the ability for underrated analytical fields like Political Economy, Economic Geography, Welfarism etc. to be brought back in the mainstream, and that's why a lot of 'developed' and OECD countries that we see today, are nothing but a product of Neoliberal Welfare States, a lot of ideas for whom have stemmed for Egalitarian Literature written throughout ages, but Mr. BoxHead ( Chief of Bullshit Law at UselessDegree.Com ), won't think twice before understanding how extensive her literature was, I bet you haven't read a page of it ( I have for reference, and I truly admire her extensive research ), and you don't know much about getting a PhD both in English and in Economics ( you think it's hard because of 'quantitative' reasoning, and empirical analysis, can't be far from it, the most significant issue with graduating for a PhD in Economics is the ability to collect the required data, and understand how to analyze the data, to produce a scholarly and scholastic piece of work, that your institution, your advisor, and your Doctoral Committee deems good enough to graduate ).

So how about you stop being an ignorant anti-intellectual P.O.S.? who speaks on topics he has no clue about.