CfA: “Modernities, Mobilities, and Change” Dissertation Workshop

May 30-31, 2025
Kathmandu, Nepal
Application deadline: February 14, 2025

The Association for Asian Studies, with funding from the Henry Luce Foundation, is pleased to host a dissertation workshop for advanced doctoral students who have completed their research and are writing their dissertations. The workshop will take place May 30-31, 2025, immediately prior to the summer 2025 AAS-in-Asia conference in Kathmandu, Nepal (participants should plan to arrive on May 29). The workshop theme will be “Modernities, Mobilities, and Change.” We invite proposals in the broad areas of the environment and climate change, issues of race and caste, ethnicity and nationalism, and politics broadly conceived, in the context of transnationalism and regional histories. The period covered could range from early modern Asia to the present. We invite applications from across the social sciences and the humanities.

The aim of the workshop is to provide advanced doctoral students with the opportunity to have one of their chapters and the argument of the dissertation subjected to an intensive critique from an inter-disciplinary panel consisting of two faculty members with expertise in the theme of the workshop and their fellow doctoral students. We suggest submitting the introduction of the dissertation to the workshop, but any chapter will serve.

The workshop will be conducted by Dr. Ali Raza, associate professor of history at Lahore University of Management Sciences, and Dr. Arjun Guneratne, professor of anthropology at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Raza is a historian of South Asia. He received his DPhil from the University of Oxford and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. His research and teaching interests include the social and intellectual history of South Asia, comparative colonialisms, anti-colonialism/decolonization, and post-colonial theory. Dr. Guneratne received his Ph.D from the University of Chicago and works on issues of ethnicity, nationalism and state formation in Nepal, and on environmental issues and the history of ornithology in Sri Lanka.

To ensure effectiveness, participation is limited to 10 students. The workshop will be limited to students who have defended their dissertation prospectus.

The AAS encourages students across disciplines to apply for the workshop. We extend a special invitation to those in the underrepresented disciplines in the AAS, including sociology, economics, and political science, to apply.

Students selected for the workshop will receive a grant to cover the costs of:

• lowest economy class airfare
• AAS-in-Asia conference registration fee
• lodging (shared room) during the workshop
• meals during the workshop

All application materials must be submitted via the AAS application portal by February 14, 2025.

To apply, please submit the following:

• A letter of recommendation from your academic advisor. Letters of recommendation must be emailed directly by your advisor to grants@asianstudies.org no later than February 14, 2025.
• A three-page proposal, outlining the themes and argument of your dissertation. Your proposal should address the following:
  • Problem the thesis addresses
  • Research question
  • Description of the body of literature relevant to the thesis
  • Description of the research conducted and methods used.
  • Significance of the study
  • Outline of chapters (chapter title and 1-2 sentences about each)
• One completed chapter
• CV (3 pages maximum)