Overview
The International Research Division (IRD) evolved out of the IIC–Asia Project, which was initiated in 1997 by Dr Karan Singh. Its aim is to promote interregional cooperation and mutual understanding between India and regions as diverse as Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. This involves lectures, conferences, workshops and exhibitions led by scholars from countries across these continents. The purpose is to stimulate research, to bring global scholarship into conversation, and foster interactions between academics, artistes, policy-makers and the media.
In 1997–2003, under the guidance of Dr Karan Singh, the IIC convened annual international conferences that centred on the cultures of specific regions and political formations. From 2003 to 2020, under the mentorship of Dr Kapila Vatsyayan, the IIC-Asia Project explored the routes of communication cutting across current state boundaries that were responsible for continuities and cross-fertilization in Asian civilization, e.g., in sacred landscapes, linguistic communities, arts and aesthetics, textile traditions, healing practices, and contemporary writing and cinema.
The IIC-Asia Project was re-named the IIC-International Research Division in 2016, expanding its remit to the wider world and the connected histories of different regions.
Since 2021, Dr Sudha Gopalakrishnan has steered the IRD. ‘SAMHiTA: South Asian Manuscript Histories and Textual Archive’, was launched in 2022, to create a digital repository of manuscripts of South Asian provenance in libraries outside India, and to retrace the histories of intellectual exchange that form South Asia’s collective inheritance.