Centre for Global South Asia

Description

The Centre of Global South Asia was founded in 2020 to coordinate research on the countries of the South Asian region (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka), and to open up its members’ long-standing expertise in the field to global and comparative perspectives.

Associated staff and postgraduate student body cover a wide variety of projects and approaches: South Asia’s place in global development history, the study of Partition and its long term impact on concepts of national citizenship, the politics of space-making, memory and heritage preservation in its ever-growing cities, the changing face of religious thought and religious practices, the role of South Asian labour migration around the world, the literary representation of South Asian food cultures in contemporary diaspora literature, and the experiences of South Asian diaspora communities in Britain and elsewhere.

Whilst the Centre is based in the Department of History within the School of Humanities, its research is characterised by an interdisciplinary approach that takes ‘History’ as a licence to study all aspects of human endeavour with methods gleaned from oral history, geography, anthropology, political theory, cultural studies, literature, material culture and museum studies. Members also include researchers based elsewhere within Royal Holloway, including the School of Law and Social Sciences, the School of Life Sciences and the Environment, and the School of Performing and Digital Arts.

Royal Holloway maintains a small but select archive of South Asia-related research materials, including a full microfilm copy of the influential early 20th century Urdu newspaper Madina, and papers relating to the Farangi Mahal family of scholars from Lucknow. As part of the University of London, the Centre also offers easy access to the world-leading resources of the British Library’s India Oriental and India Office collection, and also material held in The National Archives at Kew. The Centre is proud to host postdoctoral researchers and visiting fellows from South Asia and elsewhere in the world.

Its postgraduate community has access to UK research funding through the TECHNE consortium as well as through Royal Holloway’s own links with the Friendly Hand charitable trust. Applications for places to study can be received at any time of the year but the annual funding round usually closes in early spring of each year.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

2020

Contact details

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University affiliation(s)

Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham