We are excited to announce the selection of the Second Cohort of China India Scholar-Leaders for 2018-2020. The seven finalists for this new initiative are Ping Sun, Peng Liu, Anand Parappadi Krishnan, Chandra Sen, Tshering Chonzom Buthia, Wenjuan Zheng and Vijayanka Nair. Congratulations to all of these talented young scholars!
The China India Scholar-Leaders Initiative aims to strengthen interdisciplinary inquiries in the field of India China studies and expand a distinct network of scholarly community. This collaborative initiative involves partnerships with select scholars and institutions, including Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Centre for Policy Research in India, the National Development School at Peking University in China, and the Global Studies program at The New School.
The China India Scholar-Leader Fellows are recent PhDs who come from underrepresented backgrounds or areas of scholarship and have shown a demonstrated commitment to studying issues of Prosperity and Inequality in India and China. “The seven finalists demonstrated both extraordinary promise and commitment to pursuing challenging questions related to Prosperity and Inequality,” stated ICI Senior Director Ashok Gurung. He also noted that the selection committee was truly excited by their backgrounds and their interest in pursuing interdisciplinary understandings of the growing importance of India and China in the world.
Fellows will have the opportunity to engage in a transboundary and interdisciplinary collaboration and conduct fieldwork in India and China to advance their research projects. “One of the unique aspects of the Fellowship is that in addition to supporting field research in India and China, it affords the recipients a special opportunity to spend a month-long residency at The New School in New York City. Fellows will enhance their interdisciplinary research skills while also benefitting from ICI’s expertise and The New School’s world-class faculty in New York” said Gurung.
Along with Fellowship support for two cohorts of recent PhD graduates, the China India Scholar-Leaders Initiative will also develop a series of courses focused on Prosperity and Inequality in India and China. These courses which will be taught at partner institutions in India, China, and the US. The China India Scholar-Leader Initiative is supported by a generous grant from the Ford Foundation.
Second Cohort Fellows (2018-2020)
Wenjuan Zheng
Wenjuan Zheng is currently a PhD Candidate (ABD) in Sociology at the City University of New York-The Graduate Center. She holds an M.A. in Sociology from Columbia University and a B.S. in City Studies and Environment Science from the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research focused on civil society, organizations and social change in China and India. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at Queens College in NYC. Her publications include “Migration and Popular Resistance in Rural China: Wukan and Beyond” (co-authored with Lu, Yao and Huang, Wei in The China Quarterly, 2017), and “Contemporary Chinese Philanthropy Literature Review” (co-authored with Paul Ong and Karna Wong, Global Chinese Philanthropy Initiative, 2017)
Vijayanka Nair
Vijayanka Nair received her PhD in Anthropology from New York University in 2018 (January 22). She holds an MPhil in Social Anthropological Analysis from the University of Cambridge, as well as an MA in Sociology and a BA in Philosophy from Delhi University. Nair’s research ethnographically examines large-scale, technology-driven governance experiments in contemporary South Asia and their sociopolitical implications. Her doctoral work focused on India’s Aadhaar (“foundation”) program—the world’s largest national biometrics-based ID system—and the ways in which it reconfigures the relationship between the state and the individual. Nair situates her work at the intersections of the anthropologies of the state, politics, ethics, personhood, and technology. Her publications include “An eye for an I: recording biometrics and reconsidering identity in postcolonial India” (forthcoming in Contemporary South Asia). Vijayanka’s research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council, among others.
Tshering Chonzom Bhutia
Tshering Chonzom Bhutia is currently an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies. She received her PhD in Chinese Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India in 2014. She also holds an MPhil in Chinese Studies and an MA in Politics, both from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her research focuses on the Sino-Tibetan dialogue process, the political economy of Chinese development policies in Tibet (including Tibet and the Belt and Road Initiative), domestic (minority) sources of China’s foreign policy, Tibet factor in India-China relations & Tibetan question in India, Tibetan Dispora politics and post-14th Dalai Lama contingencies. She has just completed a major Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) funded research project comparing the Indian and Chinese government’s minority policies.
Ping Sun (Sophie)
Ping Sun (Sophie) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Communication at The Chinese Academy of Social Science. She got her PhD from School of Journalism and Communication at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in December 2016. She was the visiting scholar of Oxford University from 2015 to 2016. Her research interests are Information and Communication Technologies, new media and digital labour. Especially, she is interested in how technology and algorithms generate sociotechnical and political valence in the digital economy. She was the winner of two Best Paper Awards of International Communication Conference (ICA) and Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC). Her recent publications include Programming Practices of Chinese Code Farmers: Articulations, Technology, and Alternatives in China Perspective (2017), and Knowledge Workers, Identities, and Communication Practices: Understanding Code Farmers(co-authored with Michelangelo Magasic) in China in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique (2016). Sophie currently resides in Beijing, China.
Liu Peng
Liu Peng is an associate professor in Research Institute for Indian Ocean Economies (RIIO), Yunnan University of Finance & Economics and a PhD in School of International Studies, Jinan University. He is also a certified Economical Analyst of banking and visiting scholar at Washington University in St. Louis (2015-2016). His research interests include research of Sino-India relations, Indian Ocean region and Oversea Chinese Studies. His research papers have been published in different journals both in Chinese and English and he has also translated more than ten papers from English into Chinese and is currently translating The Oxford Handbook of Indian Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2015).
Chandra Sen
Chandra Sen has recently completed his PhD in international studies from the Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. He also holds his M.Phil and M.A. in International Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. His research focuses on Social and Economic Exclusion in China and India with special reference to ethnic minorities of Sichuan, China and Dalits of Uttar Pradesh, India. He also visited Sichuan and other cities in China for his research in 2017. He has research publications in National and International Journals. He was awarded research fellowship from Indian Council for Social Science Research in the year 2015, and also received Junior Research Fellowship in International Studies from the University Grants Commission of India.
Anand Parappadi Krishnan
Anand P. Krishnan is a Research Associate at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. He received his PhD in Chinese Politics from the Centre for East Asian Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in June 2017. His doctoral thesis is titled ‘Market Dynamics and State Responses in China: Social Welfare and Industrial Workers, 1987-2008’. He also completed his M.Phil from the same center in 2008 on “The Concept of Socialist Market Economy: A Study of the Chinese Discourse during the Deng Period.” He completed his Master’s in Politics (with specialization in International Relations) from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2006.
He has also completed a two-year India-China comparative project awarded by the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) on Labour and Social Security in Small and Medium Enterprises in Mumbai and Wenzhou, in August 2016. His areas of interest include labor relations in developing countries, informal work, interfaces of labor and urban, and welfare.