Sayoni Pandey

India Program Coordinator

Sayoni Pandey is the ICKCBI Program Coordinator in India for the India China Knowledge and Capacity Building Initiative and works with the department of South and South East Asian Studies at the University of Calcutta. She graduated from St. Xavier’s College in Kolkata. She completed her Masters degree in Political Science from the University of Calcutta with a special focus on Comparative Politics. She has been involved with some social work activities since her college days. She worked as a volunteer in several projects including medical camp in the Basirhat area. She has also participated in organising relief camps during floods in various districts in West Bengal. Previously, she worked as the programme coordinator of an Open Shelter for urban homeless under an NGO called NCWI, which helps with mainstreaming the homeless children (street children) and works to ensure a safer lifestyle for them.

SUN Xianpu 

China Program Coordinator

Sun Xianpu is a PhD candidate in International Relations at Center for South Asia Studies, School of International Studies, Yunnan University. His doctoral thesis is titled “India’s Look East Policy.” Before that, he earned his MA in International Relations from the School of International Studies at Yunnan University, and his BA in Education Technology at Hebei Normal University. His research interests focus on the Sino-India relations, India’s Foreign Policy, the Maritime Security of Indian Ocean Region, and US foreign policy towards South Asia. He has published a number of articles on India’s foreign policy in Chinese Journals. He also participated in the ICKCBI program in 2010 as a Student Fellow.

Participants

Samapti Bagchi

Samapti Bagchi is completing her Master’s degree in South and South East Asian Studies at the University of Calcutta. She completed her Master’s in Political Science from Rabindra Bharati University, and her undergraduate degree in political science from Lady Brabourne College. Her Master’s project was focused on the environment and food security issues in West Bengal and the demography of prostitution in West Bengal.

Paula Banerjee

Paula Banerjee is an Associate Professor in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Calcutta. She specializes in issues of conflict and peace in South Asia. She has published extensively on issues of gender and forced migration and on autonomy. She has been working on themes related to women, borders and democracy in South Asia and has published extensively in journals such as International Studies and Canadian Women’s Studies on issues such as histories of borders and women in conflict situations. Her published books include When Ambitions Clash (2003) and Borders, Histories and Existences: Gender and Beyond(2010). Banerjee has co-edited Internal Displacement in South Asia (2005), Autonomy Beyond Kant and Hermeneutics (2007), and Women in India Borderlands (2011). 

Graciela Breece-Rodriguez

Graciela Breece-Rodriguez is currently a student at The New School in New York City. She is pursuing a Master’s degree in International Affairs with a focus on development and governance and rights. She obtained her BA degree at the University of Te-nessee in Marketing with a focus on International Business. After graduation she hopes to work abroad addressing the rights of the Roma community in Eastern Europe. When she is not in the class-room she is working to bring awareness to under or misrepresented groups in media through various radio programs.

Rajagopal Chakraborti

Rajagopal Chakraborti is a professor in the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, and Professor of Economics and Demography at the University of Calcutta. He is also the principal faculty for the ICKCBI in India. Professor Chakraborti has also been a visiting professor at the Nankai University Institute of Population and Development in China. He completed his studies at the University of Calcutta and the London School of Economics.Professor Chakraborti has taught at the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta and various other institutions in India and abroad. He was also the Deputy Registrar at the University of Calcutta. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was a recipient of the prestigious Asia Fellowship and The Wellcome Trust Post-Doctoral Fellowship. He is the author of The Greying of India: Population Ageing in the Context of Asia (2004). 

Sudakshina Dey

Sudakshina Dey is a student in a dual MA programme in the South and South East Asian Studies Department, University of Calcutta. She also holds a BA in Political Science from Lady Brabourne College of Calcutta University. Her MA thesis focused on Envi-ronmental Studies and Demography.In her first year of the MA she was involved in a project on overfed and underfed hostel girls. In her second year she was involved with a project on Nepali migration into India, with a special focus on North Bengal.

HOU Yaochen

Hou Yaochen is completing his Master’s degree at Lanzhou University, with a focus on Tibetan environment and sustainability as well as alpine rangeland ecology and management. He completed his undergraduate degree in Agriculture from Gansu Agriculture University. He has conducted various fieldwork projects around Western China on environmental issues, and currently has a paper under review titled “The Relationship between plant species diversity and above ground productivity of Alpine meadow.”

Prabha Lalwani Jethwani

Prabha Lalwani Jethwani is currently an M.Phil. candidate in the Center of Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies, School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, JNU, and also a guest faculty in the center. She has an MA in Chinese Language and an MBA. She has a B.Sc in Comput-er Science & Information Technology from National Taiwan University, Taipei. She has also translated articles and documentaries on Tagore for his 150th Anniversary Celebrations and has been involved in interpretations for several international and national conferences and inter-governmental meetings such as RIC Academic Trilateral, BRICS, BASIC, the UN & Planning Commission of India.

JIA Shuqi

Jia Shuqi is a second-year graduate student at the Institute of International Studies at Yunnan University. She majors in international relations, with a focus on the Middle East and South Asia. Her research interests include politics, religion, and social development issues in Middle East countries and South Asia. She has published a thesis entitled “India-Saudi Arabia Relations in the early 21st Century and its Impact on China” in the Chinese academic journal Asia & Africa Review.

Danielle Kavanagh-Smith

Danielle Kavanagh-Smith is currently pursuing her doctorate in Economics from the New School for Social Research in New York City. She holds a Master’s degree in Econom-ics from The New School and completed a Bachelor’s degree in International Po-litical Economy at Fordham University. Her academic research interests include economic development, urban inequality, migration and human capital flight. She has experience in survey research and community development in low-income areas and has worked with local non-profits in conducting surveys for commercial revital-ization efforts. Her current work explores issues of wealth distribution, socio-economics and spatial mobility.

Shalini Kishan

Shalini Kishan is a Master’s student in the Graduate Program of International Affairs at the New School in New York. She also works as a research assistant at the India China Institute at The New School. Her academic background is in international devel-opment and her interests lie in understanding alternate approaches to mainstream conceptions of development. She is especially in-terested in looking at how class and gender relations are shaped and negotiated in urban settings. Originally from Delhi, Shalini was brought up in various countries abroad and has been living and studying for New York City for the last eight years.

Anil Kumar

Anil Kumar is currently pursuing his PhD from the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Delhi. His thesis is titled “Sino-Indian Relations (1998-2010): A Constructivist Approach”. His focus area is Sino-India Relations post Pokhran-II. His research interests include China and Indian Ocean, Chinese military modernization, China and South China Sea, China’s military infrastructure in Tibet, China-Pakistan nuclear nexus. He was an emerging scholar with the India China Institute in 2012. He has presented and published papers in several conferences including those organized by the Institute of Chinese Studies, the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, and the Centre for Air Power Studies.

Lily Ling

Lily Ling is an Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs at The New School for Public Engagement (NSPE) and an Associate Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs (GPIA) at Milano. Her research focuses on developing a post-Westphalian approach to world politics through the no-tion of “multiple worlds” or worldism. Her books include: Postcolonial International Relations: Conquest and Desire between Asia and the West (2002) and Transforming World Politics: From Empire to Multiple Worlds (2009), co-authored with Anna M. Agathangelou. Her latest book is The Dao of World Politics: Towards a Post-Westphalian, Worldist International Relations (2013). From 2008-2010, Professor Ling was a Faculty Fellow with the India China Institute (ICI) at The New School. She is editing a manuscript with other ICI Fellows titled, “Rethinking Borders and Security, India and China: New Connections for Ancient Geographies.” Dr. Ling’s articles have appeared in various journals and anthologies.

LIU Wanrong

Liu Wanrong is a graduate student in Yunnan University, Kunming, China. She is currently completing her Master’s degree in International Relations. She is interested in archaeology, literature and gender and society. She is also interested in the study of ancient Chinese women. 

LIU Ying

Liu Ying is working on her Master’s degree in International Relations at Yunnan University, with a focus on South Asian relations. She graduated from Jiaxing University as an English major in 2012. In her 4 year study, she found that English was a popularization tool and she was interested in international relations, so decided to pursue an advanced degree.

LU Qian

Lu Qian is a second year graduate student in the Institute of International Studies, majoring in Middle East Studies at Yunnan University. She did her bachelors in International Politics from Tianjin Foreign Studies University. In 2011, she also audited classes in political science and attended lec-tures on various aspects of social sciences in Tsinghua University. Her interests apart from research in international politics include domestic politics of China and its internal dynamics, society and culture, and comparative study on China-India growth story.

Anna Matthiesen

Anna Matthiesen is a PhD student in the Sociology Depart-ment of The New School for Social Research in New York City. She has an MA in Sociology from the same department and from the University of Bologna in Eastern European Studies. Her academic interests revolve around work in political and cultural sociology and anthropol-ogy that deals with social change in the post-so-cialist nations of East-ern Europe; the cultural construction of charitable behavior and developing forms of philanthropy, particularly in the non-first world; and sociology of religion with a focus on secularization debates.

Lauren Wong

Lauren Wong, from The New School in New York City, is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Transdisciplinary Design at the Parsons School of Design. She comes from a background in strategic design, future planning and trends analysis. Before entering the creative world, Lauren graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a degree in International Relations. As a trends analyst, Lau-ren has extensively stud-ied American Millennials, social digitalization habits and the consequences of technology on society. Her research strengths are interviewing and ethnographic design research. She hopes to work in hospitality or immersive experience design after the completion of her degree.

Shreya Sen

Shreya Sen graduated with an MA (Gold Medalist) in South and South East Asian Studies, with a specialization in Peace Studies and Refugee Studies from University of Calcutta, in 2010. In the same year she was a DAAD Visiting Masters Fellow at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Bielefeld, under the aegis of “A New Passage to India Program”. She is currently pursuing her doctoral research in South and South East Asian Studies from the University of Calcutta, on a UGC Fellowship. Her doctoral work focuses on gender, displacement and agency in Bengal and Bangladesh.

Tansen Sen

Tansen Sen was born and raised in India and moved to China at the age of 15. He received his BA from the Beijing Languages Institute, his MA from Beijing University, and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in Asian history and religions and has special scholarly interests in Buddhism, Sino-Indian relations, Indian Ocean trade, and Silk Road archeology. Professor Sen is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2003). His recent articles include: “The Travel Records of Chinese Pilgrims Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing: Sources for Cross-Cultural Encoun-ters between Ancient China and Ancient India” in Education About Asia (2006). He is currently working on a monograph that examines cross-cultural trade in Asia during the four-teenth and fifteenth centuries, a collaborative project on the Southern Silk Road, and creating a website to archive the history and experiences of the Chinese Indian community.

Bhim Subba

Bhim Subba is a doctoral candidate in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi specializing in Chinese studies. He did his MA in Political Science, Centre for Political Studies, JNU, and was a Research Associate in the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS) Delhi. His other academic interests also pertain to borderland communities and border trade via Nathula in the Sikkim Himalayas. He has been a member of the IPCS task-force on the Nathula Study in 2012, and has recently authored a short-brief titled “India, China and the Nathu La: Realizing the Potential of a Border Trade.”

Saheli Talukder

Saheli Talukder (aka “Riya”), from University of Calcutta, is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in South and South East Asian Studies. In addition, she completed a course on Communicative Chinese Language to supplement her graduate studies. Riya received her undergraduate degree in Sociology at Calcutta University at Asutosh College. She has been involved in several research projects, including “The Impact of Advertisement on Youth,” that have honed her skills in qualitative research, survey design, data analysis and interviewing. She intends to go into the travel and tourism industry after graduation.

Zong WEI

Zong Wei (aka “Mac Tyson”), from Yunnan University in Kunming, is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Interna-tional Relations. Before coming to Yunnan University, Mac matriculated in English and Japanese literature at Kunming University of Science and Technology. His current graduate academic focus within International Relations is South Asian relations, particularly Pakistan and Indian studies. In addi-tion, he also has a strong background in British literature and linguistics. Outside of his studies, Mac enjoys learning about computer programming, digital pragmatics and new technology. After he completes his graduate degree, Mac hopes to pursue a career in academia.

Zhou YA 

Zhou YA is Professor of Sociology at Yunnan University. She completed her Masters of Management from Yunnan University, with a focus on tourism management. She is currently Vice Director at the Institute of Demography and Sociology, Palm-Leaf Culture Research Center, located in the School of Development Studies at Yunnan University. She is a member of the Council of Buddhism of Kunming, where she has helped with the translation of Theravada Buddhist texts. Her published articles include “Types, Origin and Features of Poems and Songs In the Ancient Books of Theravada Spreading Region in China” (2009) and “A Study of Effects of Religion and Traditional Culture on the Harmonious Society Construction of Border Minority Region” (2008). She is Chief Editor of the books Palm-Leaf Culture and Social Development of Ethnic Region and Palm-Leaf Culture and the Construction of Harmonious Society in Xishuangbanna, China.

Jiang YU

Jiang Yu is currently a graduate student at Yunnan University. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in International Relations, with a focus on international political economy (IPE), Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in South East Asia, and Sino-Myanmar relations. He has presented and published one paper in the International affairs forum of graduate students in Beijing Foreign Studies University, which was titled “The New Structure and Security of Investment in SEA: Case Study of Myitsone Dam.”

Amy Zhang 

Amy Zhang received her MA from the Department of Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research, an interdisciplinary program which afforded her the opportunity to study social and political theory and cultural criticism. She holds undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and Art History from The University of Texas. Her interests include art and politics, the sociology of art, and the sociology of culture. Her masters thesis was on the efforts of the institutional critique art movement to persist with the modern method of critique in a changed, postmodern world. She hopes to continue teaching and researching in an academic career.

ZHAO Bole

Zhao Bole is a professor in the School of International Relations at Yunnan University. He holds diverse interests in International Relations with a focus on South Asia, as well as Indian History and culture, all while maintaining an intellectual commitment to his locality of the Yunnan province. Zhao’s intellectual and pragmatic work bridges local and international concerns linking communities that would otherwise remain divided. He is also the principal faculty for the ICKCBI in China. Last year Zhao worked with the Graduate Program in International Affairs (GPIA) at The New School as a coordinator for hosting and supervising seven graduate students. He recently published a book on South Asian International Relations. His published articles include “Function of Cultural Exchanges in China-India Relations,” and “Geopolitical Factors in India’s Rising.”

ICKCBI Participant Reflections

One goal of the program was for participating students to form lasting relationships and connections that could continue to strengthen mutual understanding and foster interdisciplinary scholarship between India, China, and the U.S. Here’s what some of the participants had to say about the program:

Chris Crews, Coordinator: 

It’s always a bittersweet moment when a program of this kind comes to an end, especially when you have been in a coordinating role. After several months of long-distance communicating with the students before the program began, and then another two months of living, learning, laughing, eating and working together, it’s hard to imagine not seeing this amazing group of people every day. As Mac Tyson might say, these are definitely not “kēn diē” friends we have made over the course of these past two months. It’s not every day that one gets the opportunity to spend an entire summer traveling through China and India, meeting a plethora of amazing people, seeing breaktaking scenery and learning about new cultures and ideas, yet that is exactly what ICKCBI provided. By combining classroom learning at our partner institutions with an intensive fieldwork and research component over the summer, we combined the best of both worlds in one. The many people we have met along the way, whether in China or India, have provided our students a new perspective on a whole range of issues, many of which became the focus of our student’s research projects. Whether in the mountains of Shangri-La or the slums of Tiljala bustee in Kolkata, we were always learning, even if some lessons were hard to swallow. The reality is that life in this world is both harsh and beautiful, and if you look closely, you will see that the students’ fieldwork captures both, and all the messiness in between.

So what did we learn from all of our travels these past two months? I think one of the biggest challenges of a project like this has been trying to find the right balance of time and space in our research and fieldwork. There were definitely moments when I thought we needed more time in a place–Shangri-La being one of those–but our tight program schedule simply didn’t allow for it. Some groups immediately jumped into their research from day one, while others were struggling to find the contacts they needed or the best way to design their research questions. All of these challenges were great learning opportunities for the students, as many had never done any kind of collaborative research or conducted fieldwork before. I’m proud to say that all of our students were able to step up and meet these challenges head on in creative and productive ways.This is where the different levels of academic training between the three countries really became apparent, and was one of the places where I saw some of the more experienced students trying to step up and act as mentors in their groups There is always a fine dance between being a peer mentor and being a peer boss–or what one group described as the phenomenon of “yiyantang,” a single dominant voice. But with clear communication and some hard negotiations, all of the groups managed to find their own version of internal harmony and unity, and through the process most grew closer together. This year represents the end of the five years of funding support from the Ford Foundation, and so the future of ICKCBI is unclear. Will it get a new lease on life in the future? I hope so. There were many important lessons learned, and some changes that must be made if the project continues, but on the whole this was a rare opportunity that very few students (or anyone for that matter) will ever get to experience in their lifetime. Lastly, I want to thank everyone in New York, Kunming, Kolkata, Dali, Lijiang, Shangri-La and elsewhere that helped make this such a magical experience for us all!

Zong Wei: “This border issue is just politics. You and me are just ordinary people, not politicians. We are young scholars”

Shalini Kishan: “The most rewarding part of this program has been finding that despite the differences in perspectives, we share the same concerns.”

Lauren Wong: “In a program like this the process of doing is as exciting as the thing that’s created when it’s done.”  

Sudakshina Dey, “ I am grateful to ICKCBI for giving me this opportunity to know about Chinese culture.”

Amy Zhang: “Both Kunming and Kolkata felt like home by the time we left it.”

Jiang Yu: “I will cherish my friendship with every member of ICKCBI.”