South Asian Studies Initiative Wordmark
Pictured: Herat Province, Afghanistan
Pictured: The Baitul Aman Jame Masjid Complex, Bangledesh
Pictured: Badshahi Mosque, Lahore, Pakistan
Pictured: Maldives
Pictured: Sri Lankan Elephants, Sri Lanka
Pictured: Himalayas, Nepal
South Asian Studies Initiative Wordmark

SASI Director

Jess Birkenholtz
Associate Professor of Asian Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
25-26 sabbatical
Research Interests: Gender, sexuality, and religion in South Asia; Hinduism; goddess traditions; Nepal

Faculty with a South Asian Studies Focus

Research Interests: Queer rhetorics, de/colonial, transnational, third-world feminisms, South Asia, composition theory, embodiment, critical disability studies
Jyoti Gulati Balachandran
Associate Professor of History
Research Interests: Muslim communities; medieval and early modern South Asia (c. 1200-1800); the Indian Ocean world
Research Interests: Critical Agrarian Studies, Feminist Political Ecology, Irrigation and Water Management, South Asia, Food Security and Dietary Diversity, Climate Smart Agriculture
Trevor Birkenholtz
Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Political ecology; development; social theory; nature-society relations; gender dynamics; urban and rural water resources; India
Mallika Bose
Associate Dean for Research, Creative Activity, and Graduate Studies
Professor of Landscape Architecture
Research Interests: Built Environment and Active Living/Healthy Eating; Public Scholarship and Community Based Design; Gender and Development; and Design/Planning Pedagogy
Madhuri Desai
Associate Professor of Art History and Asian Studies
Research Interests: South Asian architecture, urbanism, and art
Ritu Jayakar
Lecturer of Hindi and Asian Studies
Research Interests: Language pedagogy, technology and language, and Indian cinema
Bruno Jean-Francois
Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies, and Comparative Literature
Research Interests: Indian Ocean Studies; migration studies; diasporic studies and creolization
Research Interests: Spatial justice, urban informality, everyday urbanisms, place-making practices, public space, and community-engaged/participatory research.
Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies
Research Interests: Colonial history; modernization and development; science and technology; agrarian history
Assistant Teaching Professor of South Asian Religions
Research Interests: Buddhism, Hinduism, pan-Asian Tantra, Tantra and Yoga, Margins and Marginalization, Art History, Ethnography and Ethnomusicology, Plural Religious Spaces, and Indigenous Religions.
Assistant Teaching Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies
Research Interests: South Asian comparative urbanism; South Asian and transnational feminisms; Hindutva nationalism
Research Interests: Environmental Governance, Political Ecology, Feminist Science and Technology Studies, Ethnography, South Asia
Samrat Sharma
Research Interests: Hijra Subjectivities and Transnationality, Informal Literacies and World-Making; Caste, Gender, and Pedagogies; LGBTQIA+ studies
Mary SHenk
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Demography, and Asian Studies
Research Interests: Fertility, mortality, marriage, family, kinship; quantitative/demographic and qualitative approaches
Research Interests: Natural Hazards, Floods, GIS climate science statistics
Research Interests: Feminist Urban Geography, Women's Leisure, Place-making, India
Research Interests: Women's agency, Comparative and international education, sociology of education, gender, migration, South Asia
Vineeta Yadav
Professor of Political Science
Research Interests: Comparative politics; political economy; political institutions; judicial politics, development survey methods; India, Pakistan, Brazil, and China

Academic Adviser

Department of Asian Studies Academic Adviser

Graduate Students with a South Asian Studies Focus

No data was found

South Asian Studies Initiative Staff

Administrative Assistant (Dept. Head Support)