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People

Faculty

SAP has more than 50 core and affiliated faculty from across Cornell’s colleges and schools, working in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. SAP faculty and language instructors offer classes in Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, Pali, Persian, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil, Tibetan, and Urdu.

Steering Committee

The SAP steering committee provides internal faculty leadership from SAP's core faculty, collaborating with the director to set goals and priorities for SAP and to develop innovative programming and curricula related to South Asia.

Advisory Council 

The SAP advisory council is composed largely of persons based outside Cornell. With the aim of making our governance structure more global, the advisory council ensures that SAP fulfills its intellectual and educational mission in a rapidly changing international context. 

Visiting Scholars

SAP hosts visiting scholars from South Asia and elsewhere, including Fulbright fellows, our own South Asian Studies fellows, and other scholars, writers, and artists, who collaborate with Cornell faculty and students on South Asia Program activities.

Graduate Students

Students who minor in South Asian Studies work across Cornell's colleges and schools, in more than two dozen disciplines.

FLAS Fellows

SAP awards Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships to outstanding students pursuing South Asian language and area studies. The U.S. Department of Education allocates these highly competitive four-year grants to SAP in recognition of our world-class language and area study program.

Staff

SAP staff have years of combined experience working in international studies, and they play an active role in enhancing the world's knowledge about South Asia.
 

Visiting Scholar

Dr. Jomy Abraham holds a doctoral degree from the Centre for English Studies, School of Language, Literature, and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She also has an MPhil degree from the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India.

Lecturer, Asian Studies

Geographic Research Area: Nepal

Teaching/Research Interests: Teaching Nepali as a second language

Graduate Student

Rama is a PhD student in Human Computer Interaction. His primary interests lie in the areas of education and development contexts (ICT4D). In particular, he tries to understand ways in which various communities use technologies for achieving their goals and design impactful solutions.

Graduate Student

Farhana is a PhD student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell. Her research intersects the fields of adaptation planning, water, and institutional reform in Bangladesh.

Visiting Scholar

Noor Ahmad Akhundzadah received his bachelor’s degree in geology from Kabul University, Master’s in Agriculture, and Ph.D. in Geotechnical Engineering from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology of Japan.

Associate Professor, Comparative Literature

Geographic Research Area: Russia, Eurasia, and India

Teaching/Research Interests: Technology and culture, energy and the environment, media studies, and migration studies

Graduate Student

Whitman Barrett is a PhD student in the Soil and Crop Sciences Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science.

Program Manager

Daniel Bass also serves as an adjunct assistant professor of anthropology and Asian studies.

Geographic Research Area: Sri Lanka, India, and South Asian diasporas

Carl Marks Professor of International Studies

Kaushik Basu is the Einaudi Center's Carl Marks Professor of International Studies and professor of economics in the College of Arts and Sciences. Basu is president of the International Economic Association.

Professor, Global Development

Geographic Research Area: India

Teaching/Research Interests: Population studies, reproductive health and family planning, gender and development, child health and mortality, and culture and demographic behavior