Research Projects
The International Research Division (IRD) evolved out of the IIC–Asia Project, which was initiated by Dr Karan Singh in 1997. Its aim is to promote the substantive study of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean led by scholars from these countries, accompanied by purposeful dialogue. Through a sustained programme of conferences and allied cultural programmes, the IRD seeks to stimulate research, to bring global scholarship into conversation, and foster interactions between academics, artistes, policy-makers and the media.
Under the guidance of Dr Karan Singh (1997–2003), the IIC convened annual international conferences that centred on the cultures of specific regions and political formations. Under the mentorship of Dr Kapila Vatsyayan (2003–2020), 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 Afro-Asia and the Eurasian region.
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 retrace the histories of intellectual exchange that form our collective inheritance.
