Applications are invited by M.A. and Ph.D. students of the South Asia In­stitute and of the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies for research scholarships to stay up to 6 months at the Banaras Hindu University and Indian Institute of Technology of the BHU, India. The scholarships will include a monthly stipend and international travel costs and will be awar­ded on merit. The scholarships aim to give the researchers an opportu­nity to participate in the academic activities of the BHU or IIT (BHU) and profit from the intellectual exchange with scholars and students there.

During their stay, the students can attend BHU and IIT (BHU) courses, and work on their thesis with co-supervision from academics at the hos­ting institution. The scholarships are sponsered by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) under its program “A New Passage to India” and are administered within the framework of the close cooperation / MoU between the South Asia Institute (SAI) of Heidelberg University, the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), and the Indian Institute of Technology of the BHU (IIT(BHU)) in Varanasi, India.

Applications should be submitted as one .pdf file to npi@sai.uni-heidelberg.de and should include:

- Motivation letter: explain what you expect from your stay at BHU/IIT (BHU). Indicate also the preferred lenght and period of your stay, in line with the program guidelines.

- Curriculum Vitae

- Reference letter from a professor of the SAI/CATS

- Abstract of your research and/or mention of your field of interest

Application deadline: 15th November 2019 for research stays bet­ween April 2020 and March 2021.

For more information, please visit the SAI Homepage: https://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/abt/IND/npi/npi.php, or write to npi@sai.uni-heidelberg.de

The South Asia Institute cordially welcomes Jonas Buchholz at the Department of Cultural and Religious History of South Asia. Since September 2019, he conducts the DFG funded project “Temple Networks in Early Modern South India” together with Prof. Dr. Ute Hüsken at the University of Heidelberg.

He studied Sanskrit and Tamil in Heidelberg and finished his studies with an M.A. degree in 2012. In April 2012, he defended his PhD thesis on classical Tamil literature at the University of Hamburg. From 2014 to 2019, he worked as a research associate in the ERC funded project “Going from Hand to Hand: Networks of Intellectual Exchange in the Tamil Learned Traditions (NETamil)” at the University of Hamburg. He also taught as a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Tübingen and Göttingen.

His research focuses on South India (Tamil Nadu). Special interests include Tamil and Sanskrit literatures and their mutual relationship, as well as manuscript studies.