Rijuta Mehta

Rijuta Mehta is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto. She holds a doctorate from the department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She is co-author of 23 Grams of Salt: Retracing Gandhi’s March to Dandi (2020), and is currently completing a monograph on forms of anticolonialism. Education Ph.D. Brown University M.A. Brown University M.A. Delhi University B.A. Gujarat University Research Interests Postcolonial literature Visual culture Critical theory Race and Ethnicity Studies World Literature in English Publications “Punishment...

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Contact:

rijuta.mehta@utoronto.ca
Pushpa Acharya

Pushpa Raj Acharya is a poet, filmmaker, and literary scholar. He specializes in Comparative Literature and South Asian Studies and has been teaching the courses on South Asia, postcolonialism, literary studies, and creative writing.

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Location:

Room 222N, 1 Devonshire Place

Contact:

T 416-946-8842

pushpa.acharya@gmail.com
Libbie Mills

Research Interests: South Asia; Sanskrit language; early Tantra; building theory and installation procedure.

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Location:

Room JHB 335, 170 St. George Street

Contact:

libbie.mills@utoronto.ca
Zaheer Baber

Zaheer specializes in general critical sociology. His broad research interests include social theory, science, technology and society, comparative and historical sociology, race and racial projects, visual sociology etc. He has recently completed a SSHRC funded project on the role of botanical gardens and colonial rivalries in the emergence of Botany as a formal science. In addition to a number of books and articles, he is also a frequent contributor of...

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Location:

3359 Mississauga Road North South Building, Room 2077A

Contact:

T (905) 569-4348

zaheer.baber@utoronto.ca
Nadine Plachta

Nadine Plachta is a FAS Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Geography and Planning. Her work focuses on social and cultural transformations in contemporary Nepal and, in particular, the use of citizenship and belonging as a resource for governance and economic development. She has explored this theme in the context of infrastructural politics, natural resource conflicts, landscape transformation, and the construction of local ecological knowledge. Her most recent research explores...

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Contact:

nadine.plachta@utoronto.ca

twitter.com/nadineplachta
Deepali Dewan

Deepali Dewan is an art historian with a special interest in the visual cultures of South Asia. She is a Senior Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Associate Professor, status only, in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto, and is affiliated with the Centre for South Asian Studies. Her research spans colonial, modern and contemporary visual culture, knowledge production, and historiography. Her work on colonial...

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Location:

100 Queen's Park

Contact:

T 416-586-5698

deepalid@rom.on.ca

www.rom.on.ca/en/collections-research/rom-staff/deepali-dewan
Christoph Emmrich

Christoph Emmrich (PhD University of Heidelberg, 2004), is Associate Professor for South and Southeast Asian Buddhism at the Department for the Study of Religion and the Department for Historical Studies and is Chair of the UofT/McMaster Numata Buddhist Studies Program. His research bridges Southeast and South Asia as it engages with fields as diverse as Burmese and Nepalese Buddhism, and Tamil Jainism. He works with girl children, young women, and...

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Location:

Room 106N, 1 Devonshire Place

Contact:

T (416) 978-6463

christoph.emmrich@utoronto.ca
Nidhi Subramanyam

Nidhi Subramanyam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography & Planning. Subramanyam’s ongoing research investigates just approaches to plan and govern water and wastewater infrastructures in the face of rapid urbanization and the growing impacts of climate change. Her most recent projects have focused on planning, governance, and water-sanitation infrastructures in small cities and geographies undergoing rural-urban transitions in India. She is also involved in collaborative research projects...

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Location:

Room 5023, Sidney Smith Hall (100 St. George)

Contact:

nidhi.subramanyam@utoronto.ca
Beatrice Jauregui

Beatrice Jauregui is associate professor at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research is concerned with how the lived experiences and subjectivization of persons working in security institutions reflect and shape dynamics of social order and state power. Jauregui’s book Provisional Authority (University of Chicago 2016) is an ethnography of everyday police practices in northern India. She is co-editor of Anthropology and Global...

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Contact:

T 416-978-6438

beatrice.jauregui@utoronto.ca
Shafique Virani

Professor Shafique N. Virani’s research focuses on Ithna-‘ashari and Ismaili Shi‘ism, Quranic studies, Islamic history, philosophy, mysticism and pluralism, Muslim literatures in Arabic, Persian and South Asian languages, and Bhakti literature. His publications include books, a documentary film, multimedia productions, a registered invention, a proposal to the Unicode Consortium, entries in the Encyclopaedia of Islam and the Encyclopaedia of Religion, and numerous peer reviewed articles. Educated at Harvard and McGill, he...

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Location:

Room 322, 170 St. George Street

Contact:

T 416-978-4892

shafique.virani@utoronto.ca

www.utm.utoronto.ca/historical-studies/people/virani-shafique
Kelzang Tashi

Kelzang Tashi is a Research Associate in the Centre for South Asian Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. He received his PhD in anthropology at the Australian National University in 2020. His research interests lie at the intersection of religion, kinship, and social organisation with a regional focus on South Asia, particularly the Himalayas and Tibet. His forthcoming book monograph based on his dissertation...

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Contact:

kelzang.tashi@utoronto.ca
Neera Singh

Research Interests Conservation and development Commons and Commoning Practices Community forestry, forest rights and governance Environmental subjectivity; ethics of care and affective ecologies Social movements and environmental justice India

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Location:

Room 5025A, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George

Contact:

T 416-971-2658

neera.singh@utoronto.ca
Ritu Birla

Ritu Birla is Associate Professor in the Department of History. She has held positions as the Richard Charles Lee Director of the Asian Institute at the Munk School, and before that, Director of the Asian Institute’s sub-unit, the Centre for South Asian Studies. She currently directs a research project in Global Governance, Economy and Society at the Munk School. Recognized for bringing the empirical study of economy and empire to current...

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Contact:

r.birla@utoronto.ca
Rajshri (Raji) Jayaraman

Raji Jayaraman is Associate Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and the Department of Economics. Her research in development and labor economics examines the role of incentives and social preferences on the decisions and performance of students, workers, and consumers. Her recent empirical work has examined the effect of incentive pay on worker productivity; school feeding programs on student outcomes; defaults on charitable donations; and...

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Location:

1 Devonshire Place, Room 366S

Contact:

T 416-978-1727

r.jayaraman@utoronto.ca

sites.google.com/view/rajijayaraman/home
Karen Ruffle

Karen Ruffle, Associate Professor of History of Religions (UTM) and the Study of Religion (UTSG), specializes in the study of South Asian Shiʿism. Her research and teaching interests focus on devotional texts, ritual practice, and Shiʿi material practices in South Asia. She has conducted field research in India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. Her books include Gender, Sainthood, and Everyday Practice in South Asian Shi’ism (2011) and Everyday Shiʿism in South Asia...

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Contact:

karen.ruffle@utoronto.ca
Madhavi Jha

Madhavi Jha is a postdoctoral fellow at Centre for South Asian Civilizations, Department of Historical Studies. Based on her PhD research, she is currently working on a book manuscript titled Women at Work: Women Labourers and Public Works Construction in Colonial India. Departing from the usual histories of construction work which present masculine experiences, this book offers insights gained from accounting for women labourers in a sector that remains the...

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Muhammad Kavesh

Dr. Muhammad Kavesh is a FAS Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Toronto, St. George Campus. His book Animal Enthusiasms: Life Beyond Cage and Leash in Rural Pakistan (Routledge 2021, part of “Multispecies Anthropology: New Ethnographies” series) examines how human-animal relationships are conceived, developed, and carried out in rural Pakistani Muslim society. He is also a co-editor of a special journal issue for The Australian Journal of Anthropology (Dec 2020) on “Sense Making...

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Contact:

muhammad.kavesh@utoronto.ca
Aisha Ahmad

Aisha Ahmad is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, the Director of the Islam and Global Affairs Initiative and a Senior Researcher of the Global Justice Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, and the Chair of the Board of Directors of Women in International Security-Canada. She is currently a Senior Fellow at Massey College and a Fellow at Trinity College, and was formerly...

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Location:

MW 228

Contact:

T 416-287-7303

aisha.ahmad@utoronto.ca

politics.utoronto.ca/faculty/profile/260
Kiran Mirchandani

Dr. Mirchandani’s research and teaching focuses on gendered and racialized processes in the workplace; critical perspectives on organizational development and learning; criminalization and welfare policy; and globalization and economic restructuring. Using qualitative, interpretive approaches, her work is based on qualitative interviews with transnational service workers in India and workers in precarious jobs in Canada. RESEARCH INTERESTS Immigration and the labour market experiences of professional migrants to Canada Processes of racialization and gendering in...

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Contact:

T 416 978-0884

kiran.mirchandani@utoronto.ca

kiranmirchandani.net
Julie Vig

Julie Vig is an Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion. Her research focuses on premodern Sikh and Punjabi cultural production and how it relates to wider cultural worlds and networks of premodern North India (c.1500-1800). Her particular focus is on gurbilās literature and its interactions with Brajbhasha literature. She is also interested in reception history and specifically in the reception of gurbilās texts in the colonial...

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Location:

Room 214B, 170 St. George Street

Contact:

julie.vig@utoronto.ca
Shivaji Mukherjee

Research Interests: state formation; civil conflict; political economy of development; Maoist insurgency in India.

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Location:

Room DV 3263, 3359 Mississauga Road North

Contact:

T 905-828-5389

shivaji.mukherjee@utoronto.ca

www.shivajimukherjee.org
J. Barton Scott

J. Barton Scott works on questions of secularism, empire, and the history of the study of religion in colonial South Asia and Victorian Britain. He teaches courses on social and cultural theory, media and material religion, and religion in political thought. He is the author of Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule (University of Chicago, 2016) and the co-editor of Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia(Routledge, 2016). Recent publications include...

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Location:

170 St. George St., Room 205

Contact:

barton.scott@utoronto.ca
Francis Cody

Francis Cody is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto, where he is the Director of the Dr. David Chu Program in Contemporary Asian Studies. He has been teaching at U of T since 2008. His research focuses on language, politics, and media in southern India. He first brought these interests to bear on a study of citizenship, literacy, and...

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Location:

Room 269S, 1 Devonshire Place

Contact:

T 416-946-8988

F 416-946-8915

francis.cody@utoronto.ca
Naisargi N. Dave

Professor Dave’s research concerns emergent forms of politics and relationality in contemporary urban India. Her first book, Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics (Duke 2012) examines the relationship between queer desires and queer political formations. Dave argues, in short, that activism is an ethical practice comprised of critique, invention, and creative relational practice. Queer Activism was awarded the 2013 Ruth Benedict Prize by the Association for...

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Location:

Room AP 206, 19 Ursula Franklin Street

Contact:

T 416-978-6050

naisargi.dave@utoronto.ca
Tahseen Shams

I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Toronto – St. George, and the 2020-21 Bissell-Heyd Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of the United States of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. I received my Ph.D. in 2018 from the University of California, Los Angeles. My research interests are international migration, race/ethnicity, religion, and nationalism. The question guiding all my research pursuits...

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Contact:

tahseen.shams@utoronto.ca

www.tahseenshams.org
Kanta Murali

Kanta Murali is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include comparative political economy of development, Indian politics, politics of growth and economic policy, state-business relations and labor policy. Her Ph.D. dissertation (“Economic Liberalization, Electoral Coalitions and Private Investment in India”) at Princeton University aims to understand the political conditions favourable to growth-oriented policies in poor democracies by focusing on a specific empirical...

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Location:

Room SS3043, 100 St. George Street

Contact:

T 416-978-8492

kanta.murali@utoronto.ca
Frances Garrett

I have taught in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto since 2003. I grew up in Oregon, received a B.A. in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia in 2004. My research has examined the intersections between tantric practice, ritual and occult knowledge and medical theory, and what these tell us about the processes of institutional and...

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Location:

Room 302, 170 St. George Street

Contact:

frances.garrett@utoronto.ca
Kajri Jain

Professor Jain is interested in how the efficacies, affects, and values associated with images arise not only from what goes on within the picture-frame but also from the production, circulation, and deployments of images as material objects. She therefore finds it useful to bring ethnographic sensibilities and methods to the study of images. Her work on popular images in modern and contemporary India encompasses the bazaar icons known as “calendar...

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Location:

CCT 3053, UTM/SS6030A, Sidney Smith Hall, UTSG

Contact:

kajri.jain@utoronto.ca
Katharine Rankin

Katharine N. Rankin is Associate Professor of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. Her broad research interests include gender and development, comparative market regulation, financial restructuring, planning history and theory, South Asia (Nepal). She is currently conducting comparative research on the gender politics of development institutions in Nepal and Vietnam. She is currently undertaking research in the areas of commercial gentrification, neighborhood-based economic development, and post-conflict transition/Nepal. She...

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Location:

1 Devonshire Place, room 106N

Contact:

T 416-978-1592

rankin@geog.utoronto.ca
William Stafford

William F. Stafford, Jr. is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. He completed his PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley with a dissertation on the autorickshaw meter in Delhi as an exemplary format of “public” transactions and anchor of a variable ethos of commercial sociality. His current project takes up the autorickshaw meter-mounted panic button to explore architectures of...

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Contact:

william.staffordjr@utoronto.ca
Pegah Shahbaz

Pegah Shahbaz is a specialist of Persian classic literature of Iran, Central and South Asia. She is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy – the Asian Institute, an Associate Member of the Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur l’Inde, l’Asie du Sud et sa Diaspora (CERIAS) at The Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and the Section Editor of...

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Heleen De Jonckheere

Dr. Heleen De Jonckheere is a scholar of Jain literature and Jain history. Her current research focuses on the idea of translation and adaptation in the Jain context and in South Asia in general, and on the religious implications of translation. Her further interests include Jain narrative literature, Jain polemics and Jain manuscript culture, as well as the interactions of popular forms of religiosity with more established forms of religion. She...

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Contact:

heleen.dejonckheere@ugent.be

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Pushpa Acharya

Doctoral Fellow, Asian Institute
Lecturer, Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
Room 222N, 1 Devonshire Place

Contact:

T 416-946-8842

pushpa.acharya@gmail.com
Aisha Ahmad

Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Director of the Islam and Global Affairs Initiative
Senior Researcher of the Global Justice Lab, Munk School
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
MW 228
Zaheer Baber

Professor, Department of Sociology
Center for South Asian Studies

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Location:
3359 Mississauga Road North South Building, Room 2077A
Ritu Birla

Associate Professor, Department of History
Asian Institute
Centre for South Asian Studies
Research Project in Global Governance, Economy and Society

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Francis Cody

Associate Professor, Asian Institute and Department of Anthropology, UTM
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
Room 269S, 1 Devonshire Place
Naisargi N. Dave

Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
Room AP 206, 19 Ursula Franklin Street
Heleen De Jonckheere

Bhagavan Shitalnath Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for South Asian Civilizations, Department of Historical Studies
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Deepali Dewan

Dan Mishra Curator of South Asian Art & Culture, Royal Ontario Museum
Associate Professor (status only), Department of Art History
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
100 Queen's Park
Arti Dhand

Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Religion
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
Room 237, 73 Queen's Park Crescent
Christoph Emmrich

Director, Centre for South Asian Studies
Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Religion

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Location:
Room 106N, 1 Devonshire Place
Elisa Freschi

Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy
Affiliated Faculty, Centre for South Asian Studies

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Frances Garrett

Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Religion
Director, Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
Room 302, 170 St. George Street
Kanishka Goonewardena

Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Planning
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
Room 5062, 100 St. George Street
Alessandro Graheli

Assistant Professor, Department of Historical Studies
Centre for South Asian Studies
Anup Grewal

Assistant Professor, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies (UTSC)
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Kajri Jain

Professor, Department of Visual Studies, UTM
History of Art, UTSG
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
CCT 3053, UTM/SS6030A, Sidney Smith Hall, UTSG
Beatrice Jauregui

Associate Professor, Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Contact:

T 416-978-6438

beatrice.jauregui@utoronto.ca
Rajshri (Raji) Jayaraman

Associate Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and Department of Economics
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
1 Devonshire Place, Room 366S
Madhavi Jha

Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for South Asian Civilizations, Department of Historical Studies
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Malavika Kasturi

Associate Professor, Department of Historical Studies, UTM
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
Department of History, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street
Muhammad Kavesh

FAS Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Dasha Kuznetsova

Event Coordinator and Administrator, Asian Institute

Location:
1 Devonshire Place, room 227N
Ken MacDonald

Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences, UTSC
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
Room MW276, 1265 Military Trail
Katherine MacIvor

Program Advisor and Communications Officer, Asian Institute

Location:
Room 228N, 1 Devonshire Place
Rijuta Mehta

Assistant Professor, Department of English
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Heather Miller

Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, UTM
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
HSC 346
Libbie Mills

Assistant Professor, Department of Historical Studies, UTSC, and Department for the Study of Religion
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
Room JHB 335, 170 St. George Street
Kiran Mirchandani

Professor, Adult Education and Community Development Program, OISE

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Shivaji Mukherjee

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, UTM
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
Room DV 3263, 3359 Mississauga Road North
Kanta Murali

Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
Room SS3043, 100 St. George Street
Rajyashree Narayanareddy

Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Planning, UTSC
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
Room B508, 1265 Military Trail
Nadine Plachta

FAS Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Geography and Planning
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Bhavani Raman

Associate Professor, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, UTSC
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Srilata Raman

Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Religion
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
Room JHB313, 170 St. George Street
Katharine Rankin

Professor, Department of Geography and Planning
Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
1 Devonshire Place, room 106N
Ajay Rao

Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Religion
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
NE 153G, 3359 Mississauga Road North
Karen Ruffle

Associate Professor, Departments of Historical Studies and Study of Religion
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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J. Barton Scott

Associate Professor, Historical Studies and the Study of Religion
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
170 St. George St., Room 205

Contact:

barton.scott@utoronto.ca
Pegah Shahbaz

Postdoctoral Fellow, Asian Institute

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Tahseen Shams

Assistant Professor, Sociology

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Jayeeta Sharma

Associate Professor, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, UTSC
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
Room HW428A, 1265 Military Trail
Neera Singh

Associate Professor, Department of Geography & Planning
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
Room 5025A, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George
William Stafford

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Visual Studies (UTM)
affiliated with the Centre for South Asian Studies

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Nidhi Subramanyam

Assistant Professor, Department of Geography & Planning
Affiliated faculty, Centre for South Asian Studies

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Location:
Room 5023, Sidney Smith Hall (100 St. George)
Kelzang Tashi

Research Associate, Centre for South Asian Studies

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Julie Vig

Assistant Professor, Department for the Study of Religion
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
Room 214B, 170 St. George Street
Shafique Virani

Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Historical Studies, UTM, and Department of Islamic Studies
Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute

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Location:
Room 322, 170 St. George Street

Contact:

T 416-978-4892

shafique.virani@utoronto.ca

www.utm.utoronto.ca/historical-studies/people/virani-shafique

Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy @ University of Toronto

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