Welcome

Amuthavalluvan joined the Social Sciences Department as an anthropologist to work in POLLIN, an IFP’s multidisciplinary project funded by CNRS on pollinators and bee-keeping practices in Puducherry.

Marine Al Dahdah joined the Social Sciences Department in October 2021 as a research fellow. She is a CNRS fellow from the Center for studies of social movements (CEMS-EHESS) and member of Unit 1276 “Risks, Violences, Reparation” of the French National health and medical research body (Inserm). Her research focused on digital health in India, Ghana and Kenya.

Gaston Bizel-Bizellot joined in May the IFP as VIA to participate in the development of the ODRIIS — Observatory of Rural Dynamics and Inequalities in South India, IRD.

Barbara Curda joined the Department of Social Sciences on a Marie Curie Global Fellowship in August 2021. She is working on the EU-funded project GATRODI - Gender asymmetry in the transmission of Odissi dance in India – a case study.

Quentin Devers joined the Department of Social Sciences of the IFP in September 2021 to carry out research in archaeology in Ladakh. He is a researcher at CNRS, associated with the Research centre for East Asian civilisations (CRCAO/UMR8155).

Thomas Drouin joined the Department of Social Sciences of the IFP in juillet 2021 to work on the MANDU archeological project hosted at IFP and coordinated by Anne Casile (IRD).

Loraine Kennedy, visiting researcher at IFP, arrived in September. She is coordinating a project called « Urbanizing Chennai. The role of urban peripheries in steering economic growth and pursuing sustainability », in collaboration with both Indian and European partners.

Shakila H., joined the IFP in December 2020, from our partner organization, MIDS, in the Fishercoast Project, to work on the impact of industrialization along the coastal regions of Cuddalore.

Frédéric Landy, former director of IFP and presently associated fellow, visited IFP in January-April. For the WaterPondi project he participated in workshops with riverine people of Ossudu tank; for the POLLIN project he conducted interviews on honey bees and pollination; lastly, he contributed to the Local Food Festival event.

Bertrand Lefebvre joined the Social Sciences Department in September as a research fellow. He is Associate professor of Global Health at EHESP School of Public Health (France) and a research associate with ARENES-EHESP and with CEIAS (EHESS CNRS). His teachings cover geomatics, health geography, health impact assessment, health policy analysis and global health. After contributing to projects on dengue, he is now looking at the governance of air pollution in large African and Asian cities.

Gopinath Sricandane joined the Social Sciences Department in October as the co-applicant and project manager of the project “Numbers in Business: Documenting Chettiar Mercantile Account Keeping Practices in 19th-20th century South India” (EAP1309) under the Endangered Archives Programme funded by the British Library.

Delphine Thivet joined the IFP as the new head of the Social Sciences Department in October 2021. She is Assistant Professor in sociology at the University of Bordeaux and associated with the Centre Émile Durkheim. She is currently coordinating research programmes on the transition to sustainable agriculture and mitigation to climate change in agriculture.

Doris Barboni joined IFP as new head of the Ecology Department in December 2021. She is a CNRS fellow from the Centre Européen de Recherche et d’Enseignement des Géosciences de l’Environnement (CEREGE) at Aix en Provence, France. She is a paleoecologist interested in the impact of paleovegetation and paleoclimate changes on human evolution.

Nithya Kuppusamy joined the IFP’s Fishercoast team in January 2021, from our partner organization, MIDS in the project to study the impact of industrialization along the Cuddalore Coast.

KSR Chakravarthy joined the IFP as a Research Assistant in the Indology Department in November. For one year, he will work within the framework of the project “An Intellectual History of Late Vedānta (1750-1900)”, associating the University of Cambridge, the EFEO and the IFP, and funded by the Leverhulme Foundation.

Lalitha M., PhD candidate in Social Sciences with a specialisation in Urban Studies from IIT Madras, joined the RUSE project team for the period from March to December 2021. Her fieldwork was concentrated in the coastal fishing neighbourhoods of Kuruchikuppam and Vaithikuppam.

Oliver-James Crook arrives in February 2022 at the l’IFP as “VIA”, for two years to strengthen the geomatics department, in particular the work in satellite image processing applied to environment questions.

S. Venkatarajan, Ramesh and Murugesan D. joined the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO for 10 months from 1 August 2021 to clean, oil and digitize manuscripts within the framework of the project “Safeguarding for posterity two private collections of palm-leaf manuscripts from the Tamil country” — British Library Pilot Project EAP 1294 directed by Suganya Anandakichenin (Affiliated Researcher, Centre for the Studies of Manuscript Cultures, Hamburg University).

Within the framework of the project “Light on Hatha Yoga: A critical edition and translation of the Haṭhapradīpikā, the most important premodern text on physical yoga.” — an AHRC and DFG project led by James Mallinson (SOAS), Jason Birch (SOAS) and Jürgen Hanneder (Philipps-Universität Marburg), 4 research assistants— Paras Mehta, Harshal Bhatt, Dibakami Krutarth and M V Muralikrishnan—joined the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO on 1 September 2021 to collect, transcribe and collate manuscripts of the Haṭhapradīpikā.

Within the framework of the project “Palm-leaf manuscripts from the Śaṅkaran monastic institutions of Kerala” — British Library Major Project EAP 1304 directed by Hugo David, Ajithan joined the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO from 1 October 2021 to catalogue palm-leaf collections kept in Vadakke Madham Brahmaswam, produce paper records, and contribute to the conservation of manuscripts and the constitution of metadata to be sent to the British Library.

K.S.R. Chakravarthy, who has just obtained his doctorate from the University of Tirupati, joined the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO on 1 December 2021 for a period of 12 months, within the framework of the project “Intellectual History of Late Vedānta” — ORPG 8704 hosted by the University of Cambridge, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and directed by Vincenzo Vergiani, Senior Lecturer, University of Cambridge. He will work on the premises of the IFP and, under the guidance of Hugo David, member of the EFEO and Head of the Department of Indology of the IFP, he will constitute a database of Vedānta scholars in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and gather the necessary documentation to that end, in the form of printed books and manuscripts.

In the framework of their sub-project RFA07 "Towards a Comprehensive Approach to the Study of South Indian Palm-Leaf Manuscripts," the EFEO received a grant from the Cluster of Excellence "Understanding Written Artefacts" (UWA) of the University of Hamburg to employ Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan to work on the cataloguing of 175 Sanskrit manuscripts in Telugu script. Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan worked at the IFP with Hugo David and also assisted Dr. S.L.P. Anjaneya Sarma (EFEO) with the 2nd volume of his critical edition of the Neranausutravyakhyanani - 1.3.67 of the Astadhyayi with fourteen unpublished commentaries.

Odile Henry joined as the director of the CSH in September 2021. She holds a doctorate in sociology from EHESS. She is a full professor of sociology at Paris 8 University.

Laurence Gautier joined as researcher in September 2021. She is a historian, her research examines the debates around Indian Muslims’ position in the nation after partition, as citizens and as a minority group.

Caterina Guenzi holds a doctorate in Social Anthropology from EHESS. She has joined as a CNRS researcher in October 2021 for one year. She is doing fieldwork in Chandigarh and investigating the plural landscape of assisted reproductive technologies.

Christophe Guilmoto is a Senior Fellow in Demography at the IRD-CEPED. He came to India in March 2021 to work on the demography of inequalities.

Stéphanie Tawa-Lama is a CNRS Research Director (political science) at CEIAS-CNRS-EHESS, joined CSH in september 2021. She studies contemporary Indian democracy through four main themes: political representation (with a special focus on women); political mobilisations ; participatory experiences; and urban governance.

Claire Calvel joined in November 2021 for six months, as an intern at CSH. She is enrolled at the ENS Paris-Saclay. She works under the supervision of Prof. Henry, on the effects of the privatisation of higher education on inequality in India.

CSH hired four new research assistants Rupal Anand, Ruchi Dwivedi, Christine George and Bharati Nakkeeran, who have joined our Challenging Inequalities (CHALLINEQ) project team, to conduct household surveys on housing prices dynamics in Delhi. They worked under the supervision of Prof. Nicolas Gravel, and are coordinated by Shailja Tandon.

Laurent Glattli joined as a visiting doctoral fellow between 1st March 2021 till 31st August 2021. He is pursuing a PhD at the Department of South Asian Studies, Humboldt University in Berlin since 2019, with support from the Berlin Senate and the German Academic Exchange Service. Laurent is now working on a history of heritage conservation policies in South Asia.

Jonathan Koshy Varghese joined as a visiting doctoral fellow between October 2021 till Augustt 2022. He is a doctoral. student in the History and Civilizations department of the CEIAS-EHESS Paris, under the supervision of Prof. Ines Zupanov. He is currently on a sabbatical from LSR, Delhi University where he was the position of Assistant Professor since 2015.

Thomas Licart joined as a doctoral student between September 2021 till March 2021. He is a PhD student in Demography at the Laboratory SAGE (Societies, Actors and Government in Europe), Strasbourg University since 2018. Thomas Licart’s dissertation focus on the demographic and geographic pattern of family systems in India.

Aasim Khan joined as a research associate in September 2021. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, IIIT- Delhi and currently its head. He holds a doctorate in Politics and Public Policy (Contemporary India). As a social scientist, he has cross-disciplinary interests in theories of social media, social networks and Big Data.