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Collaboration

Collaboration

The Centre is part of many Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) which the University has signed with institutions within and outside India. The Centre for Political Studies has also been engaging with various universities and research institutions for holding joint events, faculty exchange and student exchange programs. CPS has a long term engagement with the Nirman Foundation.

Collaboration with Nirman Foundation (NF)

Since 2006, a generous Lifetime endowment fund has been created for the Centre by eminent political theorist Professor Lord Bhikhu Parekh. The NF Fund has been supporting four important programs and academic activities of the Centre:

NF merit-cum-means Scholarship to a limited number of MA 1st and 2nd year students based on a rigorous selection process;

NF Annual Lecture by a distinguished and renowned scholar;

Research Methodology Workshop for research students of Centre/JNU;

Workshop/Roundtable for the Centre’s faculty. 

The aim of these activities is to give students and faculty of the Centre opportunities to engage with ongoing and new domains of research and theorisation in the discipline of Political Science and Social Sciences largely.

Over the past fifteen years, the Annual Nirman Foundation Lecture has been delivered by globally acclaimed scholars like Madhav Menon (2006), Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (2007), Upendra Baxi (2008), Marc Galanter (2009), Partha Chatterjee (2010), Charles Taylor (2011), Chetan Bhatt (2012), Sudipta Kaviraj (2014), Arindam Chakraborti (2015), V. Geetha (2016), Usha Ramanathan (2017), Rajeev Bhargava (2018), Prasenjit Duara  (2019), Leela Fernandes (2020) and Arjun Appadurai (2021). 

The Centre has also organized Roundtables around the work of leading social scientists. These events have given young scholars and faculty a chance to engage directly with these scholars.

Over the years, the Scholarship programme of the Nirman Foundation has helped a large number of students to pursue and complete their MA program successfully. Many of them went on to pursue their Doctoral studies in prestigious institutions in India and abroad. 

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.