Skip to main content

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.
 

Professor, Applied Economics and Management

Prabhu Pingali is director of Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition.

Geographic Research Area: India, Philippines, and Mexico

Student Engagement and Community Outreach Coordinator
Sarah Plotkin works with students, staff, and faculty to create meaningful programming that engages K-12 students and teachers.
Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy

Geographic Research Area: India, China, and other emerging markets

Teaching/Research Interests: Macroeconomics of financial globalization, financial regulation, and monetary policy frameworks and exchange rate policies in emerging markets

FLAS Fellow

Degree: PhD, Near Eastern Studies

Language: Persian

Research interests: Jewish and Muslim diasporas, Sufism, and Persian literature

Assistant Professor, Anthropology

Geographic Research Interest: India-Pakistan

Teaching/Research Interest: Anthropology of the state, ethnographic film, minority citizenship, religious nationalism.

Graduate Student

Katie Rainwater is a PhD candidate in the Department of Development Sociology. Her dissertation research explores labor relations in the shrimp industries of Bangladesh and Thailand.

Committee chair/advisor: Eli Friedman

Adjunct Professor, Plant Breeding and Genetics

Geographic Research Area: India and Bangladesh

Teaching/Research Interests: Research and technology transfers to promote agricultural innovations
 

Associate Professor, Anthropology

Geographic Research Area: India

Teaching/Research Interests: Feminist, postcolonial and queer theories, religion and secularism, medicine and the body

Assistant Professor, Science and Technology Studies

Geographic Research Area: India

Teaching/Research Interests: History of science and technology, British empire from the 17th through the 19th centuries, science and the state, East India Company and the India Office in the 19th century

Teaching Associate, Asian Studies

Geographic Research Area: India and Pakistan

Teaching/Research Interests: All levels of Urdu and advanced level of Hindi