Faculty Research

CSAS Faculty Research Projects

University of Michigan and CSAS Faculty Research Projects

With over 40 outstanding faculty working on South Asia, the Center for South Asian Studies supports faculty in 15 different departments across the Michigan campus. Below are some of our faculty associates' current research projects.

Projects Funded by the Trehan Foundation

The Center for South Asian Studies, with resources generously provided by the Trehan Foundation, is currently funding four grants to University of Michigan research projects.

 

Indian Archeological Research

Professor Carla Sinopoli Department of Anthropology, Principal Investigator

Professor Sinopoli is currently co-director of the "Early Historic Landscapes of the Tungabhadra Corridor" (EHLTC) project - a collaborative excavation project based in northern Karnataka in South India. The EHLTC project seeks to understand social, economic, and political lifeways and transformation among agricultural communities in inland South India during the first millennium BC South Indian Iron Age. This was a time of remarkable change in the region. At the start of the Iron Age, around 1200-1000 BC, we see the development of new technologies and burial practices and the creation of large durable sedentary communities; by the end of the period in the late centuries BC, we see the development of urban and state level communities, linked by a web of social, ideological and economic relation to each other and to north Indian states and empires (as well as to Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean). To explore these issues, Sinopoli, her colleagues, and students are conducting excavations at the Iron Age town of Kadebakele, discovered by the team in their prior research in the region. Excavation seasons were held in 2003 and 2005, with at least three more seasons planned for the future. This research is conducted in collaboration with the Karnataka Department of Archaeology and Museums, and with scholars, Dr. Sharada Srinivasan, an archaeometallurgist based at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, and Dr. Kajal Shah, a ceramic specialist and recent PhD from MS University in Vadodara (Baroda). In addition, graduate students from the US and India participate in the field work each year, and three US-based students are pursuing doctoral dissertation research deriving from the project.

 

An important commitment of our project is the building of collaborative research relations and the training of Indian students in archaeological methods. Between 4-8 Indian graduate students join us in the field each year, coming from universities in Kerala, Delhi, Pune, and Karnataka. Two Indian participants, Ms. Uthara Suvrathan and Mr. Hemanth Kadambi, are currently pursuing doctoral degrees at the University of Michigan. Mr. Kadambi has directed an archaeological project examining the early Chalukyan empire (7-9th centuries AD); Ms. Suvrathan is pursuing doctoral research on the South India Iron Age and has participated in an archaeological project in Kerala. Sinopoli has two other doctoral students also pursuing archaeological research in South Asia.

 

Visual India: A Trans-national Digital Archive for Popular Indian Visual Culture

Professor Manishita Dass Asian Languages and Cultures, Principal Investigator

This is a collaborative project between faculty at U-M, Heidelberg University in Germany and the SARAI/Center for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi.Tasveer. Ghar is a trans-national virtual "home" for collecting, digitizing, and documenting various materials produced by South Asia's exciting popular visual sphere including posters, calendar art, pilgrimage maps and paraphernalia, cinema hoardings, advertisements, and other forms of street and bazaar art.

Some of the key fields of exploration within the network are: (a) the social and performative life of images; (b) the histories and everyday lives and voices of producers, disseminators and ‘consumers’; (c) various techniques of visuality/media of visualization (for instance, ritual or theatrical per­formance, or political spectacle). We also hope that such a digital data-base, which we envisage as an open access, democratic space, will also serve as a hub around which to promote dialogue and debate on matters pertaining to South Asian popular visual culture. We hope that Tasveer Ghar, we anticipate, will help promote inter-disciplinary scholarly exchange across the globe between academics, artists, and others on South Asian popular visual culture.

For more information see: www.tasveerghar.net

 

Biomarkers of Arsenic Exposure and Assessment of Risks of Arsenic in Drinking Water in Nadia District, India

Professor Jerome Nriagu School of Public Health, Principal Investigator 

This project is a collaboration between scholars at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and two institutions in West Bengal, India. Its Principal Investigators are Professor Jerome Nriagu of the University of Michigan School of Public Health; Dr. Debashis Chatterjee of the Department of Chemistry, University of Kalyani; and Dr. D.N. Guhu Muzamder of the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research in Calcutta.

 

Trehan India Initiative at the University of Michigan

The Center for South Asian Studies

The goal of the Initiative is to enrich thinking on the key social, political, and economic issues facing India today and to provide opportunities for substantial collaboration among scholars, activists, and community groups across disciplinary and knowledge culture boundaries. To that end the Initiative will provide funding each year for a visiting scholar from India to teach a seminar and course, graduate student support, a year-end conference culminating with an edited volume, and a lecture series and other events tuned to the thematic focus. Each theme will be coordinated by one or more faculty members, and/or by a faculty/graduate student group, selected on the basis of a winning theme-year proposal. The winning proposal for year one, which will commenced in the fall of 2008, is "State, Space, and Citizenship: Indian Cities in the Global Era."

 

Please view the South Asia Initiative page for more information about year one of the Initiative.

 

Selected University of Michigan India-Focused Projects

 

Ross School of Business Center for Global Resource Leverage: India

Directors: Prof C K Prahalad and Prof M S Krishnan

The Center for Global Resource Leverage: India is a research satellite of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. The Center is located in Bangalore, India. Scholars study the next practices of managers, including how they leverage global resources and access new markets. Another area of interest is the interface between global firms and Indian firms, as well as the issues and challenges associated with maximizing the talent pool and knowledge infrastructure in India.

 

The center is jointly directed by Professor C.K. Prahalad, the Harvey C. Fruehauf Professor of Business Administration, and Professor M.S. Krishnan, the Michael R. and Mary Kay Hallman Fellow and chair of the Business Information Technology area.

Through the Center's research and teaching, the following problems and issues will be addressed:

• How can global and Indian firms benefit from the developing outsourcing relationships?
• What dynamics define this relationship?
• What are the points of tension in this relationship, and how can they be resolved?
• How can companies shape these outsourcing relationships to sustainable, mutually beneficial propositions.

 

School of Public Health Study of Lead Exposure & Outcomes Amongst Children in Chennai, India

Professor Howard Hu Principal Investigator

Sponsor: NIH/FIC

This study aims to describe lead exposure and exposure-dose relationships of lead dose to neurobehavioral outcomes (and the modifying effect of genetic polymorphisms on those same relationships) in primary school children in Chennai (formerly Madras), India.