Sumathi Ramaswamy lights a lamp during the opening ceremony of the 2018 AIIS Junior Fellows Conference, as Director-General Purnima Mehta and outgoing President Philip Lutgendorf look on.
Indispensable is the single word that comes to mind.
As a consortium of universities and colleges dedicated to the study of a single place—in this case, India—in all its diversity and complexity and historical depth, institutions like AIIS are a reminder of the value of learned expertise, scholarly dedication, and the willingness to look again at old issues in new ways, and explore new issues by drawing on the wealth of accumulated knowledge.
- Ramaswamy on the role of AIIS in the current global climate
Sumathi Ramaswamy, James B. Duke Professor of History at Duke University, recently began her term as President of AIIS. We caught up with her to talk about the Institute’s past, present, and future.
