Tuesday, 09 December 2025
Tuesday, 09 December 2025
Want to learn game theory from an IIT professor while sipping on a margarita at a bar? That is exactly what three friends and St Stephen’s college graduates are trying to do.
Sonalika Aggarwal, Mishka Lepps and Kezia Anna Mammen’s initiative, called UnLecture, has a simple premise: Take professors and subject matter experts out of classrooms and put them in bars and pubs where they can teach a topic that they love to an audience who chose to be there, not for credits or certificates, but purely out of curiosity.
"I felt very comfortable in this kind of a setting," said professor Saptarshi Mukherjee, who teaches game theory at IIT Delhi and recently spoke at an Unlecture evening in Delhi’s Depot48 to an audience of 40 people.
"In IIT Delhi, it is very formal. Here it was very informal, and I could reach people in a very different way."
He quipped that this was the first time he had ever given a lecture after being “a few pegs down”.
For him, the difference isn’t just in the ambience, but also in the attitude. The difference he said was that in classrooms, students walk in with prior experience and fixed expectations, but here “they come with open minds”.
"Here people are more curious," he said. "I can drive their minds in a particular way, enthuse their minds, incite them at times with examples."
Game theory, he argued, belongs in such spaces because "everybody is a player in the society," and a basic awareness of strategic thinking can change how people see everyday life.
The founders of UnLecture, all in their 20s and for each their first venture, missed the “intellectually charged” conversations that they used to have inside the university campus since they graduated.
"In college, every conversation I had with these guys was very like, whoa, I'm learning so many new ideas," Mishka recalled. "Outside of it, we didn't find that in other spaces."
Outside India, the “after hours” concept isn’t new, with bars doubling up as venues for talks and other social events. Since the Covid-19-induced lockdown ended, there has been a shift in how people across the world socialise.
"We wanted to break and disrupt the pattern of what a lecture should look like," said Mishka. "I want to learn about game theory tonight and that should feel as casual as going out to see a movie."
Kezia sees Unlecture as an antidote to the internet's echo chambers. According to her, the content a user consumes on social media is usually what they already agree with, but at a bar, the crowd is a “very heterogeneous mix”. But trying to pull off something like this also comes with its set of challenges. Till now, UnLecture has remained geared towards young professionals and students who can shell out Rs 500 (redeemable at the bar) for every session.
The founders acknowledge that an offline event is not accessible for everyone.
Sonalika said candidly: "Right now it's us three. If we stop, it stops,"
Still, Mukherjee believes initiatives like this could quietly chip away at the rigid tracks of Indian higher education.
"Here we get ourselves streamlined very soon," he said.
According to him, Unlecture, by contrast, lets people "channel curiosities in diverse interest areas" long after formal education ends.
Someone might attend a talk on game theory or environmental policy, go home intrigued, and "maybe make a profession, maybe make a career."
"Right now we're all learning in silos," said Sonalika. "We want you to not learn in isolation, but learn in conversation."
