At MICA, she teaches postgraduate and FPM courses including ‘How to Read Culture’, ‘Business, Society and Environment’, ‘Philosophies of Science’, and ‘Theories of Communication and Media’. Her approach to teaching emphasizes participatory and experiential learning, empathetic classroom management, and connecting theoretical perspectives with real-world contexts.
She was associated with the Centre for Learning and Innovative Pedagogy (CLIP) at MICA as a Postdoctoral Fellow from July 2024 to Oct 2026, where she worked on interdisciplinarity in management learning and climate and sustainability curricula in business education. She is also involved in the design and organization of faculty development workshops for AI integration, better classroom management, and updating domain knowledge.
Her doctoral research culminated in the ethnographic monograph Gender, Caste, and Class in South India’s Technical Institutions, published by Oxford University Press in 2024. The book examines engineering college contexts in South India and explores how institutional histories, aspirations for careers in IT, and disciplinary structures shape learning landscapes, professional identities, and career pathways of youth. She was an invited speaker at the University of Chicago’s Tamil Forum and Ahmedabad University’s Social Sciences Division. She has also presented her work at conferences in IIT Hyderabad, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the University of Nottingham, and South Asian University.
Before joining MICA, Prof. Hebbar taught literature and language at Women’s Christian College, Chennai, and worked as a Research Assistant at Heidelberg University’s South Asia Institute in New Delhi. She started her career as a Subeditor at The Hindu and continues to write for non-academic audiences.