Social Science Research Council

The South Asia Program seeks to promote new and innovative research across all disciplines of the social sciences and humanities in and on this world region. It seeks to further a model of intellectual exchange founded on critical dialogues across disciplines, countries and generations. Program objectives include: inter-disciplinarity, collaboration and the integration of teaching and research. These are manifested through fellowship programs and research networks. The program has also created a virtual research resource, SARN: South Asia Research Network for the Social Sciences and Humanities.

The Program’s most recent activities include implementation of a multi-year writing fellowship program in South Asia which allowed successful applicants from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka time off from teaching to write up completed research. Fellowship themes have included “Resources & Society”, “Migration”, “Boundaries of Bodies, States and Societies”, and "The 'Long' 1950s" The program, funded by the Ford Foundation, especially sought to encourage scholars who have had relatively fewer opportunities for exposure on the international academic circuit.

In 2007-2008, the South Asia program is organizing two projects aimed at enhancing the community of social science research in South Asia. Both are funded by the Ford Foundation’s Delhi office.

I. Collaborative Research Grants Competition

The SSRC has announced a small grants competition for collaborative research in and on South Asia that builds upon the recently concluded fellowship program. Eight teams from the fellowship's capstone workshop were invited to submit proposals and budgets for collaborative research grants. The funds are intended to support more sustained research activities and to enable research partners to have at least two or three face-to-face meetings with each other in order to develop their research collaboration.

II. International Conference on Inter-Asian Connections

The SSRC is organizing an international conference on "Inter-Asian connections" where scholars of South Asia will have an opportunity to participate in and build new intra-regional and inter-regional networks of scholarship and intellectual exchange.

To be held in Dubai on February 21-24, 2008, this international conference will bring together South Asia scholars who are interested in furthering the comparative and inter-regional dimensions of their research, and scholars of other parts of Asia who have similar comparative and inter-regional interests. A notable innovation of the conference is to reconceptualize "Asia" as an interlinked historical and geographical formation stretching from the Middle East through Eurasia to East Asia. This expanded understanding should bring to the fore new and unanticipated research themes and cross-regional/trans-regional connections and formations. For more details please go to Inter-Asian Connections.

Other recent South Asia program activities include publication of a handbook of social science essays, produced in Nepali, to help college students make the transition from undergraduate to graduate school, conducting regional faculty workshops on migration and natural resources and the preparation of reports on the state of social science capacity in South Asia.

The program works through partner institutions in the region and is advised by a rotating panel of distinguished scholars of South Asia. These scholars advise shape and guide the South Asia program while also acting as liaison between the region and the SSRC.