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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei is a PhD student in Music, with research interests in time and form in Persian moosiqi sonati, 20th-century and contemporary music in Iran, theatricality and absence, and empathy and vulnerability in creation and performance.
Shree Saha is a PhD student in the field of applied economics and management. Her research interests include women’s empowerment, maternal and child nutrition, financial inclusion, and development.
Research interests: environmental history, agrarian studies, the built environment, land use and regulation, South Asian diasporic networks, and architectural and agricultural expertise
Trishna is a PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology. Her research interests include carceral institutions as well as practices of prison reform and rehabilitation in India.
Payal is a Ph.D. candidate in the field of Applied Economics and Management. Her work is primarily focused on development economics and applied econometrics.
Devika Singh Shekhawat is a writer, educator and researcher from India. Her research interests lie at the intersection of gender and labor studies, public health, migration studies, and developmental issues.
Bruno Shirley is a PhD student in Asian studies. He focuses mainly on Pali Buddhist depictions of kings and kingship in Southern Asia, particularly Sri Lanka. He holds an MA in religious studies from Victoria University of Wellington.
Eric Tagliacozzo is the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the director of the Einaudi Center's Comparative Muslim Societies Program and a core faculty member of the Southeast Asia Program and South Asia Program.
Sarah Thompson is a Ph.D. Candidate in political science at Stanford University. Her research leverages causal inference methods in the study of traditional governance and the political agency of women, with active projects in Pakistan, India, and Mexico.
