We cordially welcome Dr. Shonaleeka Kaul as DAAD scholarship holder at the Department of History in summer term 2019 (from May to July 2019) at the South Asia Institute. She is a cultural historian of early South Asia, specializing in working with Sanskrit texts. She is currently Associate Professor at the Center for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where she received in 2006 her PhD and in 2000 her M.A. in history.

Her areas of research comprise early Indian history, with special emphasis on classical Sanskrit literature (kāvya), cultural history, history of ideas, behavioural history, gender, urbanism, literary theory, cultural transmission, regional Studies and history of early Kashmir.

Shonaleena Kaul will teach the following courses (starting on 2 May):

- Lecture course “Early India: Introduction to Cultural History” (Friday, 9-11 am, room 130.00.03)

- Advanced seminar on “Gender and Literature in Early India” (Friday, 2-4 pm, room 130.00.03)

- Reading Course “History and Memory in Premodern South Asia” (Thursday, 2-4 pm, room 011.00.01)

Shonaleeka Kaul was a Malathy Singh Distinguished Lecturer in South Asian Studies at Yale University, USA from 2007-08 and a Jan Gonda Fellow in Indology at Leiden University, The Netherlands in 2014. Her newest book “The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini”, was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press, Delhi and two more monographs (Eloquent Spaces: Meaning and Community in Early Indian Architecture and Looking Within: Life Lessons from Lal Ded) are forthcoming. Other publications include “Cultural History of Early South Asia: A Reader” (edited volume, 2013) and “Imagining the Urban: Sanskrit and the City in Early India” (2010).

Further information is available here: https://www.jnu.ac.in/content/shonaleeka-kaul

The South Asia Institute cordially invites to the first public lecture in the Institute’s new Bergheim location by Prof. Pranab Bardhan, „Governance Issues in Economic Development: A China-India Perspective“. The lecture will take place on Friday, May 3, 2019, 2:15 – 3:45 pm in the new grand Lecture Hall of CATS (Großer Hörsaal, Voßstrasse 2, Room 110.01.05).  (Poster)

There will be opening remarks by Prof. Dr. Aurel Croissant, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences. The lecture will be followed by a reception hosted by SAI’s Department of Political Science

In his talk, Prof. Bardhan will go beyond the usual simplistic authoritarianism-democracy distinction in the China-India comparative discussion and discuss in detail issues of internal organization of government, abuse of governance and corruption, and decentralized structures and practices in the two countries.

Pranab Bardhan is Professor of Graduate School at the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a PhD degree from Cambridge University and had previously been on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Indian Statistical Institute and the Delhi School of Economics.

Dr. Himanshu and Dr. Jivanta Schottli jointly edited the special Issue of India Review on "Globalization and Governance in India". Prof. Rahul Mukherji provided the introduction to the latest journal issue which includes also insightful articles authored by Dr.Jivanta Schottli and Prof. Markus Pohlmann, Dr. Himanshu Jha, Dr. Aseema Sinha and Dr. Markus Pauli. The special issue ends with an epilogue by Prof. Subrata K. Mitra and can be accessed here.