Rate My Professor Martha Karunakar

Dr. Martha Karunakar serves as Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English at SSN College of Engineering. She earned her Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and holds M.Phil., M.A., and B.A. degrees, each with gold medals and first rank from Madras University and Mangalore University. Her professional career spans 20 years in teaching and research within English Language Teaching and English Studies. She began as a Lecturer at St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, for one year, followed by 12 years as Assistant Professor at Women’s Christian College, Chennai, where she also headed the Department of Languages and acted as Controller of Examinations. Additionally, she contributed as a member of the Board of Studies and Board of Examiners at Madras Christian College and reviews research articles for Web of Science-indexed international journals.

Dr. Karunakar's research specializations include English Language Teaching, English Studies, and Children’s Literature. Her key publications encompass the book chapter “English and Engineering Students: A Love-Hate Relationship” in Transformative Approaches to Career-Ready Education (Springer, 2025), “Portrayal of Women in the Select Works of K. Srilata” in Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Women Poets (2015), “Teaching Occupational Skills to Workers of a Heritage Museum” in the Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes (2020), “Encouraging English Language Production using TED Talks at the Tertiary level” in The Journal of Teaching English with Technology (2019)—which received the Best Paper Award at the International Seminar on the Role of International Languages in Higher Education (ISRIL’18)—“Using Comics and Graphic Novels as tools to enhance Language Learning” in The English Classroom (2017), and “The Fantasy Chronotope in Popular Children’s Authors: Enid Blyton and Eoin Colfer” in The Criterion (2013). Recent works include contributions to sentiment analysis in Tulu text (Indian Journal of Natural Sciences, 2024) and the shared task on sentiment analysis in Tamil and Tulu (2023). She co-edited a special issue of Veda’s Journal of English Language and Literature (2017) and supervises Ph.D. scholars at Anna University, including Chaitanya Sabhasundar L., Soumya John, Cerin P. Simon, and Maria Bridget Jenitta S.