Sabina Sen, a NIAS-Exeter PhD student and an accomplished Odissi dancer.

India-Exeter partnership goes from strength to strength

The College of Humanities welcomed Professors Narendar Pani, Anindya Sinha, Sharada Srinivasan, Carol Upadhya, and Dr Smriti Haricharan from Bangalore's National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), on a recent visit.

NIAS, a prestigious, research-led institution, is a key partner for the College in India. This is the third year in which the College has offered studentships for PhDs jointly supervised between the two institutions, in Drama and Archaeology. The student cohort travel between Exeter and India to work with their co-supervisors at NIAS and conduct fieldwork, which in the case of the archaeology students means new survey and exploration in rural Andra Pradesh, and for Drama students includes studying street performance in Delhi, Odissi dance in Orissa and Kolkata, and flash mobs in Indian cities.

During their visit in late September, Sabina Sen, one of the NIAS-Exeter PhD students and an accomplished Odissi dancer, performed to much acclaim as part of the Department of Drama’s two-day Pre-sessional research seminar.

In addition, faculty from both the Drama and Archaeology Departments in Exeter and from NIAS took part in a joint one-day interdisciplinary symposium entitled ‘Intangible Histories’. This proved to be an exciting and fascinating event where shared areas of interest emerged across disciplines and institutions, and offered possibilities for future research collaborative projects. The symposium was also the first in a series of launch events for the new Centre for South Asian Research within the College of Humanities.

Professor Andrew Thorpe, Dean of the College of Humanities commented: “We are thrilled by the continuing positive progress of our partnership with NIAS. This visit further cements our strong relationship.”

Professor Thorpe is due to join the Vice-Chancellor’s delegation to Delhi and Calcutta in November 2014.

Date: 13 October 2014

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