Co-ordinators:
Sonia Sikka, Professor, Philosophy Department, University of Ottawa
Lori Beaman, Canada Research Chair in the Contextualization of Religion in a Diverse
Canada, Religious Studies, University of Ottawa
Bindu Puri, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Delhi University
Speakers:
Rajeev Bhargava, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
Charu Gupta, Associate Professor, Department of History, Delhi University
Gopal Guru, Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
Pralay Kanungo, Professor & Chair, Centre for Political Studies, JNU
Rinku Lamba, Assistant Professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU
Arshad Alam, Assistant Professor, Center for the Study of Social Systems, JNU
Sebastian Thomas Velassery, Professor, Philosophy Department, Panjab University
A. Raghuramaraju, Professor, Philosophy Department, University of Hyderabad
Solange Lefebvre, Chair, Religion, Culture and Society, Université de Montréal (Canada)
Ashwani Peetush, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada)
Ratna Ghosh, James McGill Professor and William C. Macdonald Professor of Education,
McGill University (Canada)
Linda Woodhead, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Department of Politics, Philosophy
and Religion, Lancaster University (U.K.)
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Associate Professor, Political Science, Northwestern
University (U.S.)
Invited Chairs:
Najma Akhtar, Professor, Department of Educational Administration, NUEPA
Amiya Sen, Professor of Modern Indian History, Jamia Millia Islamia
Student Discussants:
Manvitha Singamsetty, Department of Philosophy, University of Ottawa
Leo van Arragon, Department of Religious Studies, University of Ottawa
BIODATA
ARSHAD ALAM is Assistant Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research interests include issues of Muslim identity, education and politics. He has taught at the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and was an International Ford Fellow at the University of Erfurt, Germany. Apart from academic publications, he writes for popular print and online media platforms. He is the author of Inside a Madrasa: Knowledge, Power and Islamic Identity in India (Routledge, 2011).
LORI G. BEAMAN, Ph.D. is the Canada Research Chair in the Contextualization of Religion in a Diverse Canada and Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her publications include Defining Harm: Religious Freedom and the Limits of the Law (UBC Press, 2008); “Is Religious Freedom Impossible in Canada?” Law, Culture, and the Humanities (2010); “‘It was all slightly unreal’: What’s Wrong with Tolerance and Accommodation in the Adjudication of Religious Freedom?” Canadian Journal of Women and Law (2011) and “Just Work it Out Amongst Your Selves: The Implications of the Private Mediation of Religious Freedom,” Citizenship Studies (2012). She is co-editor, with Peter Beyer, of Religion and Diversity in Canada (Brill Academic Press, 2008). She is principal investigator of a 37 member international research team whose focus is religion and diversity (religionanddiversity.ca).
RAJEEV BHARGAVA is internationally recognized for his work on multiculturalism, secularism and democracy. He is currently the Director and Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi (CSDS). Dr. Bhargava’s publications include: The Promise of India’s Secular Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2010); “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism,” in Indian Political Thought (Routledge, 2010); “Constitutional Democracy and Hindu Nationalism,” in Democratic Culture (Routledge, 2011); Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution (editor; OUP, 2008); Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy (co-editor; OUP, 1999); Secularism and its Critics (editor; OUP, 1998).
RATNA GHOSH is James McGill Professor and William C. Macdonald Professor of Education at McGill University, where she was Dean of Education. She was featured in Time Magazine, Canadian Edition, October 13, 2003, in an article on “Canada’s Best in Education.” Her work on Education and Diversity has won her many awards and honours such as the Order of Canada, Order of Quebec and Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada. She is an Associate Fellow of TWAS (formerly the Third World Academy of Sciences). She publishes regularly in books and journals. Her co-authored book, Education and the Politics of Difference, will appear in second edition in 2013. She was President of the Comparative and International Education Society of the US, and is a former President of the Shastri-Indo-Canadian Institute.
CHARU GUPTA is an Associate Professor of History at Delhi University. She did her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. She has been a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, Delhi, a Visiting Associate Professor at Yale University, a Rama Watamull Distinguished Indian Visiting Scholar at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, a Visiting Faculty at the University of Washington, a Fellow of the Social Science Research Council, New York, an Asia Fellow of the Asian Scholarship Foundation, Thailand, a Visiting Fellow at the Wellcome Institute, London, and a South Asian Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. She has presented papers in a large number of national and international seminars and conferences. Her publications include the books, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (co-published by Permanent Black & Palgrave, 2002), Contested Coastlines: Fisherfolk, Nations and Borders in South Asia (Routledge, 2008), and more recently in Hindi Stritva se Hindutva Tak (Rajkamal, 2012). She is also the editor of Gendering Colonial India: Reforms, Print, Caste and Communalism (Orient Blackswan, 2012). Alongside, she has published several papers on gender, Dalits, masculinity, sexuality, fundamentalism and nationalism in various national and international journals. She is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled The Gender of Caste: Dalit Identities in Colonial North India.
GOPAL GURU is Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Dr. Guru has a long and distinguished body of work on social justice in relation especially to Dalits and women in India. He is also a member of the Central Advisory Board on Education at the Ministry of Human Resource Development in New Delhi, and a member of the Steering Committee, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Some of his recent publications are: “The Idea of India: Desi, Derivative and Beyond,” Economic and Political Weekly (September 2011); “Liberal Democracy in India and the Dalit Critique,” Social Research (Spring 2011); “Social Justice”, in Companion to Indian Politics (Oxford University Press, 2010); and Humiliation: Claims and Context (editor; Oxford University Press, 2009).
ELIZABETH SHAKMAN HURD is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Graduate Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She teaches and writes on global formations of law, authority and power, with particular attention to the politics of religious diversity. Her fields of interest include the history and politics of US foreign relations; the politics of secularism, the intersection of law and religion; and the global politics of the postcolonial Middle East and North Africa. Dr. Hurd is the author of The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton, 2008), which won the American Political Science Association’s Hubert Morken Award for the Best Publication in Religion and Politics (2008-2010), and is co-editor of Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age (Palgrave, 2010). She is also co-organizer of “The Politics of Religious Freedom: Contested Norms and Local Practices,” a three-year study of legal and political contestation surrounding religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities in South and Southeast Asia, the U.S., the Middle East, and the European Union, funded by the Luce Foundation. In 2012-13 Dr. Hurd is participating in the Northwestern Public Voices Thought Leadership fellowship program, which seeks to increase the public impact of women and minority thought leaders in their universities and beyond.
PRALAY KANUNGO is Professor of Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. His research areas include religion and politics, ethnic and communal conflicts, and the Indian Diaspora. He is a leading expert on the ideology and practices of organizations espousing Hindutva, having published studies on the RSS in India, on anti-Christian Hindu fundamentalism in Orissa and on Hindu nationalism in the U.S. From 2008-2009, he was a Steering Group Member of the International (India-UK-USA) Research and Networking Project on "The Public Representation of a Religion Called Hinduism: Postcolonial Patterns in India, Britain and the US," sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK. Dr. Kanungo’s publications include: Public Hinduisms (co-edited; Sage, 2012); "Marginalised in a Syncretic City: Muslims of Cuttack," in Muslims in Indian Cities (C. Hurst & Co, 2012) “Hindutva Combats Christianity in Orissa,” Purushartha (2012); Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva: Local Mediations and Forms of Convergence (co-edited; Routledge, 2011); “Diasporic Politics of Hindu Nationalism in the United States,” in International and Transnational Political Actors: Case Studies from the Indian Diaspora (Manohar, 2011); “Hindtva's Discourse on Development,” in Religion, Communities, Development: Changing Contours of Politics and Policy in India (Routledge, 2010); RSS's Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan (Manohar, 2002).
RINKU LAMBA is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, where she teaches political theory. She was educated in Delhi, Oxford and Toronto. She is interested in modern Indian political thought and contemporary political theory, and is presently working on a book length manuscript on Indian liberalism. Her recent and forthcoming publications combine themes in modern Indian political thought (nationalism, for example) with concerns of contemporary political theory (such as the place of the instrumentalities of the law and state in schemes to accommodate religious and cultural diversity). She has been a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, an invited Visiting Professor at the Institute for Asian and African Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin and, most recently, a Harold Coward India Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria in Canada.
SOLANGE LEFEBVRE is member of the Royal Society of Canada, Research Chair in Religion, Culture and Society and Professor in the faculty of Théologie et de Sciences des Religion at the Université de Montréal, where she was also the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Religions (2000-2008). She has been working on religion in the public arena for many years. Her most recent publications include the edited collections Le programme d’éthique et culture religieuse (with M. Estivalèzes; Presses de l'Université Laval, 2012), Les religions sur la scène mondiale (with Robert R. Crépeau; Laval, 2010), Le Patrimoine religieux du Québec: Éducation et transmission du sens (Laval, 2009) and the book Cultures et spiritualités des jeunes (Bellarmin, 2008).
ASHWANI PEETUSH is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. He has published papers on human rights, cultural diversity, and topics in legal and political philosophy, as well as Indian philosophy. Some of his publications include “Justice, Diversity, and Dialogue: Rawlsian Multiculturalism" (forthcoming),” "Indigenizing Human Rights: First Nations, Self-Determination, and Cultural Identity," in Indigenous Identity and Activism (Shipra Press, 2009), "Kymlicka, Multiculturalism, and Non-Western Nations," in Public Affairs Quarterly (2003), and "Cultural Diversity, Non-Western Communities, and Human Rights," in Philosophical Forum (2003).
BINDU PURI teaches Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi. Dr. Puri is interested in problems of moral and political philosophy and has been seriously engaged in attempts at articulating and recovering the Gandhian legacy. She has written papers in professional journals and edited anthologies around the same and related subjects. Her recent publications include “The Self and the Other: Liberalism and Gandhi,” Philosophia, 2011 and “Freedom and the Dynamics of the Self and the “Other”: Re-constructing the Debate between Tagore and Gandhi,” Sophia (May 2012). She is the author of Gandhi and the Moral Life (Mittal, 2004), and editor of Mahatma Gandhi And His Contemporaries (Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2001). She has also co-edited Reason, Morality and Beauty: Essays on the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Volume 1, and Terror, Peace and Universalism: Essays on the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Volume 2 with Heiko Seivers for Oxford University Press (2007).
A. RAGHURAMARAJU has his PhD. from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and is presently Professor at the University of Hyderabad. His publications include: Modernity in Indian Social Theory (Oxford University Press, 2011, 2012); Grounding Morality: Freedom, Knowledge and Plurality of Cultures (edited with Jyotirmaya Sharma; Routledge, 2010); Enduring Colonialism: Classical Presences and Modern Absences in India Philosophy (OUP, 2009, 2012); Debating Gandhi: A Reader, editor (OUP, 2006, 2008, 2010); Debates in Indian Philosophy: Classical, Colonial and Contemporary (OUP, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011), CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2007. He has published in Economic and Political Weekly, Seminar, Social Scientist, Alternatives, AI and Society, Journal of Indian Philosophical Quarterly, Third Text, Indian Philosophical Quarterly. He writes in Telugu on Telugu literature.
AMIYA P. SEN took his Masters degree in History from the University in Delhi followed by a Ph.D from the same university. After a brief career in the civil services, he settled down to a life of teaching and research with which he has been engaged for the last 25 years. He has served the University of Delhi, Visva Bharati and is currently on the faculty of Department of History & Culture, Jamia Millia Islamia. He has been Agatha Harrison Fellow at the University of Oxford and Visiting Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. He has published extensively with OUP, Penguin, Permanent Black, E.J. Brill, IIAS and Primus Books. His areas of interest are the intellectual and cultural histories of colonial India.
SONIA SIKKA is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa. Her primary areas of research are philosophy of religion, philosophy of culture and continental philosophy. In addition to works on Heidegger, Levinas and Nietzsche, she has written on Johann Gottfried Herder’s thought in light of contemporary debates about race, identity, relativism and multiculturalism. Her current research focusses on aspects of religious identity in a number of countries including India. She is also writing a monograph on Heidegger. Recent publications include: “Moral Relativism and the Concept of Culture,” Theoria (2012); “The Perils of Indian Secularism,” Constellations (2012); “Untouchable Cultures: Memory, Power and the Construction of Dalit Selfhood,” Identities (2012); Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference (Cambridge University Press, 2011); "Liberalism, Multiculturalism and the Case for Public Religion," Politics and Religion (2010).
MANVITHA SINGAMSETTY is currently a PhD candidate in Political Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, Canada. After completing her Bachelor’s and Master’s program in Philosophy from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, she went on to complete her M.Phil from Delhi University. In the winter of 2008 as part of her M.Phil program, she was a Commonwealth visiting scholar at the University of Ottawa where she conducted research on Canadian multiculturalism and issues of diversity management in contemporary liberal democracies. Prior to that, she spent a year in Japan as a JASSO Foundation Scholar studying Mahayana Buddhism and the Lotus Sutra’s recommendations for world peace. She has also worked with a number of NGOs in India and managed projects that involved poverty alleviation, entrepreneurship and media campaigns. She worked as a negotiator in the Track II peace processes to alleviate the violence that occurred in Kashmir during the Amarnath land crisis in 2008. Bringing her academic and professional interests together, she is currently working on a thesis that explores the intersection of religion, justice and minority relations in contemporary multicultural societies.
LEO VAN ARRAGON is a 3rd year PhD student in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Ottawa. His area of research, conducted under the supervision of Dr Lori Beaman, is the regulation of religion in public education and the issue of funding for non-Catholic faith based schools. This project follows his 37 year professional career as an educator in privately funded Christian schools in Ontario which included political advocacy work on behalf of faith based schools. His thesis, "The Ontario Election of 2007: Faith based schools and the boundaries of religious freedom", includes comparative work with the regulation of religion in other jurisdictions and fits under the wider research initiative, "The Religion and Diversity Project" directed by Dr. Beaman.
SEBASTIAN VELASSERY is Professor of Philosophy at Panjab University. Dr.Velassery's research areas include social philosophy, value theory and philosophy of culture. He writes in both English and Malayalam, and has published many articles in Malayalam on philosophical, literary and religious topics. Dr. Velassery is also a member of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, and is associated with the Centre for the Study of Culture and Values, both located in Washington DC. His publications in English include: Globalization and Cultural Identities: Philosophical Challenges and Opportunities (in press, Overseas Press); Cultural Creativity and Contemporary Changes: The Indian Mind (editor; in press, The Catholic University of America); Foundations of Indian Social Life: Cultural, Religious and Aesthetic (editor; Book Surge Publishers, 2008); Casteism and Human Rights: Toward An Ontology of the Social Order (Times Academic Publishing Group, 2005).
LINDA WOODHEAD is Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University (Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion). She is also Director of the £12m UK research programme ‘Religion and Society’. This consists of 75 separate research projects, which are run by academics across the UK. Her most recent book is Religion and Change in Modern Britain (edited with Rebecca Catto; Routledge, 2012). Other publications include A Sociology of Religious Emotions (with Ole Ris; OUP, 2010), The Spiritual Revolution. Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality (with Paul Heelas; Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), and Christianity: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2004).
Sonia Sikka, Professor, Philosophy Department, University of Ottawa
Lori Beaman, Canada Research Chair in the Contextualization of Religion in a Diverse
Canada, Religious Studies, University of Ottawa
Bindu Puri, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Delhi University
Speakers:
Rajeev Bhargava, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
Charu Gupta, Associate Professor, Department of History, Delhi University
Gopal Guru, Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
Pralay Kanungo, Professor & Chair, Centre for Political Studies, JNU
Rinku Lamba, Assistant Professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU
Arshad Alam, Assistant Professor, Center for the Study of Social Systems, JNU
Sebastian Thomas Velassery, Professor, Philosophy Department, Panjab University
A. Raghuramaraju, Professor, Philosophy Department, University of Hyderabad
Solange Lefebvre, Chair, Religion, Culture and Society, Université de Montréal (Canada)
Ashwani Peetush, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada)
Ratna Ghosh, James McGill Professor and William C. Macdonald Professor of Education,
McGill University (Canada)
Linda Woodhead, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Department of Politics, Philosophy
and Religion, Lancaster University (U.K.)
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Associate Professor, Political Science, Northwestern
University (U.S.)
Invited Chairs:
Najma Akhtar, Professor, Department of Educational Administration, NUEPA
Amiya Sen, Professor of Modern Indian History, Jamia Millia Islamia
Student Discussants:
Manvitha Singamsetty, Department of Philosophy, University of Ottawa
Leo van Arragon, Department of Religious Studies, University of Ottawa
BIODATA
ARSHAD ALAM is Assistant Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research interests include issues of Muslim identity, education and politics. He has taught at the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and was an International Ford Fellow at the University of Erfurt, Germany. Apart from academic publications, he writes for popular print and online media platforms. He is the author of Inside a Madrasa: Knowledge, Power and Islamic Identity in India (Routledge, 2011).
LORI G. BEAMAN, Ph.D. is the Canada Research Chair in the Contextualization of Religion in a Diverse Canada and Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her publications include Defining Harm: Religious Freedom and the Limits of the Law (UBC Press, 2008); “Is Religious Freedom Impossible in Canada?” Law, Culture, and the Humanities (2010); “‘It was all slightly unreal’: What’s Wrong with Tolerance and Accommodation in the Adjudication of Religious Freedom?” Canadian Journal of Women and Law (2011) and “Just Work it Out Amongst Your Selves: The Implications of the Private Mediation of Religious Freedom,” Citizenship Studies (2012). She is co-editor, with Peter Beyer, of Religion and Diversity in Canada (Brill Academic Press, 2008). She is principal investigator of a 37 member international research team whose focus is religion and diversity (religionanddiversity.ca).
RAJEEV BHARGAVA is internationally recognized for his work on multiculturalism, secularism and democracy. He is currently the Director and Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi (CSDS). Dr. Bhargava’s publications include: The Promise of India’s Secular Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2010); “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism,” in Indian Political Thought (Routledge, 2010); “Constitutional Democracy and Hindu Nationalism,” in Democratic Culture (Routledge, 2011); Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution (editor; OUP, 2008); Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy (co-editor; OUP, 1999); Secularism and its Critics (editor; OUP, 1998).
RATNA GHOSH is James McGill Professor and William C. Macdonald Professor of Education at McGill University, where she was Dean of Education. She was featured in Time Magazine, Canadian Edition, October 13, 2003, in an article on “Canada’s Best in Education.” Her work on Education and Diversity has won her many awards and honours such as the Order of Canada, Order of Quebec and Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada. She is an Associate Fellow of TWAS (formerly the Third World Academy of Sciences). She publishes regularly in books and journals. Her co-authored book, Education and the Politics of Difference, will appear in second edition in 2013. She was President of the Comparative and International Education Society of the US, and is a former President of the Shastri-Indo-Canadian Institute.
CHARU GUPTA is an Associate Professor of History at Delhi University. She did her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. She has been a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, Delhi, a Visiting Associate Professor at Yale University, a Rama Watamull Distinguished Indian Visiting Scholar at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, a Visiting Faculty at the University of Washington, a Fellow of the Social Science Research Council, New York, an Asia Fellow of the Asian Scholarship Foundation, Thailand, a Visiting Fellow at the Wellcome Institute, London, and a South Asian Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. She has presented papers in a large number of national and international seminars and conferences. Her publications include the books, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (co-published by Permanent Black & Palgrave, 2002), Contested Coastlines: Fisherfolk, Nations and Borders in South Asia (Routledge, 2008), and more recently in Hindi Stritva se Hindutva Tak (Rajkamal, 2012). She is also the editor of Gendering Colonial India: Reforms, Print, Caste and Communalism (Orient Blackswan, 2012). Alongside, she has published several papers on gender, Dalits, masculinity, sexuality, fundamentalism and nationalism in various national and international journals. She is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled The Gender of Caste: Dalit Identities in Colonial North India.
GOPAL GURU is Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Dr. Guru has a long and distinguished body of work on social justice in relation especially to Dalits and women in India. He is also a member of the Central Advisory Board on Education at the Ministry of Human Resource Development in New Delhi, and a member of the Steering Committee, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Some of his recent publications are: “The Idea of India: Desi, Derivative and Beyond,” Economic and Political Weekly (September 2011); “Liberal Democracy in India and the Dalit Critique,” Social Research (Spring 2011); “Social Justice”, in Companion to Indian Politics (Oxford University Press, 2010); and Humiliation: Claims and Context (editor; Oxford University Press, 2009).
ELIZABETH SHAKMAN HURD is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Graduate Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She teaches and writes on global formations of law, authority and power, with particular attention to the politics of religious diversity. Her fields of interest include the history and politics of US foreign relations; the politics of secularism, the intersection of law and religion; and the global politics of the postcolonial Middle East and North Africa. Dr. Hurd is the author of The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton, 2008), which won the American Political Science Association’s Hubert Morken Award for the Best Publication in Religion and Politics (2008-2010), and is co-editor of Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age (Palgrave, 2010). She is also co-organizer of “The Politics of Religious Freedom: Contested Norms and Local Practices,” a three-year study of legal and political contestation surrounding religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities in South and Southeast Asia, the U.S., the Middle East, and the European Union, funded by the Luce Foundation. In 2012-13 Dr. Hurd is participating in the Northwestern Public Voices Thought Leadership fellowship program, which seeks to increase the public impact of women and minority thought leaders in their universities and beyond.
PRALAY KANUNGO is Professor of Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. His research areas include religion and politics, ethnic and communal conflicts, and the Indian Diaspora. He is a leading expert on the ideology and practices of organizations espousing Hindutva, having published studies on the RSS in India, on anti-Christian Hindu fundamentalism in Orissa and on Hindu nationalism in the U.S. From 2008-2009, he was a Steering Group Member of the International (India-UK-USA) Research and Networking Project on "The Public Representation of a Religion Called Hinduism: Postcolonial Patterns in India, Britain and the US," sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK. Dr. Kanungo’s publications include: Public Hinduisms (co-edited; Sage, 2012); "Marginalised in a Syncretic City: Muslims of Cuttack," in Muslims in Indian Cities (C. Hurst & Co, 2012) “Hindutva Combats Christianity in Orissa,” Purushartha (2012); Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva: Local Mediations and Forms of Convergence (co-edited; Routledge, 2011); “Diasporic Politics of Hindu Nationalism in the United States,” in International and Transnational Political Actors: Case Studies from the Indian Diaspora (Manohar, 2011); “Hindtva's Discourse on Development,” in Religion, Communities, Development: Changing Contours of Politics and Policy in India (Routledge, 2010); RSS's Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan (Manohar, 2002).
RINKU LAMBA is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, where she teaches political theory. She was educated in Delhi, Oxford and Toronto. She is interested in modern Indian political thought and contemporary political theory, and is presently working on a book length manuscript on Indian liberalism. Her recent and forthcoming publications combine themes in modern Indian political thought (nationalism, for example) with concerns of contemporary political theory (such as the place of the instrumentalities of the law and state in schemes to accommodate religious and cultural diversity). She has been a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, an invited Visiting Professor at the Institute for Asian and African Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin and, most recently, a Harold Coward India Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria in Canada.
SOLANGE LEFEBVRE is member of the Royal Society of Canada, Research Chair in Religion, Culture and Society and Professor in the faculty of Théologie et de Sciences des Religion at the Université de Montréal, where she was also the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Religions (2000-2008). She has been working on religion in the public arena for many years. Her most recent publications include the edited collections Le programme d’éthique et culture religieuse (with M. Estivalèzes; Presses de l'Université Laval, 2012), Les religions sur la scène mondiale (with Robert R. Crépeau; Laval, 2010), Le Patrimoine religieux du Québec: Éducation et transmission du sens (Laval, 2009) and the book Cultures et spiritualités des jeunes (Bellarmin, 2008).
ASHWANI PEETUSH is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. He has published papers on human rights, cultural diversity, and topics in legal and political philosophy, as well as Indian philosophy. Some of his publications include “Justice, Diversity, and Dialogue: Rawlsian Multiculturalism" (forthcoming),” "Indigenizing Human Rights: First Nations, Self-Determination, and Cultural Identity," in Indigenous Identity and Activism (Shipra Press, 2009), "Kymlicka, Multiculturalism, and Non-Western Nations," in Public Affairs Quarterly (2003), and "Cultural Diversity, Non-Western Communities, and Human Rights," in Philosophical Forum (2003).
BINDU PURI teaches Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi. Dr. Puri is interested in problems of moral and political philosophy and has been seriously engaged in attempts at articulating and recovering the Gandhian legacy. She has written papers in professional journals and edited anthologies around the same and related subjects. Her recent publications include “The Self and the Other: Liberalism and Gandhi,” Philosophia, 2011 and “Freedom and the Dynamics of the Self and the “Other”: Re-constructing the Debate between Tagore and Gandhi,” Sophia (May 2012). She is the author of Gandhi and the Moral Life (Mittal, 2004), and editor of Mahatma Gandhi And His Contemporaries (Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2001). She has also co-edited Reason, Morality and Beauty: Essays on the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Volume 1, and Terror, Peace and Universalism: Essays on the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Volume 2 with Heiko Seivers for Oxford University Press (2007).
A. RAGHURAMARAJU has his PhD. from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and is presently Professor at the University of Hyderabad. His publications include: Modernity in Indian Social Theory (Oxford University Press, 2011, 2012); Grounding Morality: Freedom, Knowledge and Plurality of Cultures (edited with Jyotirmaya Sharma; Routledge, 2010); Enduring Colonialism: Classical Presences and Modern Absences in India Philosophy (OUP, 2009, 2012); Debating Gandhi: A Reader, editor (OUP, 2006, 2008, 2010); Debates in Indian Philosophy: Classical, Colonial and Contemporary (OUP, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011), CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2007. He has published in Economic and Political Weekly, Seminar, Social Scientist, Alternatives, AI and Society, Journal of Indian Philosophical Quarterly, Third Text, Indian Philosophical Quarterly. He writes in Telugu on Telugu literature.
AMIYA P. SEN took his Masters degree in History from the University in Delhi followed by a Ph.D from the same university. After a brief career in the civil services, he settled down to a life of teaching and research with which he has been engaged for the last 25 years. He has served the University of Delhi, Visva Bharati and is currently on the faculty of Department of History & Culture, Jamia Millia Islamia. He has been Agatha Harrison Fellow at the University of Oxford and Visiting Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. He has published extensively with OUP, Penguin, Permanent Black, E.J. Brill, IIAS and Primus Books. His areas of interest are the intellectual and cultural histories of colonial India.
SONIA SIKKA is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa. Her primary areas of research are philosophy of religion, philosophy of culture and continental philosophy. In addition to works on Heidegger, Levinas and Nietzsche, she has written on Johann Gottfried Herder’s thought in light of contemporary debates about race, identity, relativism and multiculturalism. Her current research focusses on aspects of religious identity in a number of countries including India. She is also writing a monograph on Heidegger. Recent publications include: “Moral Relativism and the Concept of Culture,” Theoria (2012); “The Perils of Indian Secularism,” Constellations (2012); “Untouchable Cultures: Memory, Power and the Construction of Dalit Selfhood,” Identities (2012); Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference (Cambridge University Press, 2011); "Liberalism, Multiculturalism and the Case for Public Religion," Politics and Religion (2010).
MANVITHA SINGAMSETTY is currently a PhD candidate in Political Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, Canada. After completing her Bachelor’s and Master’s program in Philosophy from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, she went on to complete her M.Phil from Delhi University. In the winter of 2008 as part of her M.Phil program, she was a Commonwealth visiting scholar at the University of Ottawa where she conducted research on Canadian multiculturalism and issues of diversity management in contemporary liberal democracies. Prior to that, she spent a year in Japan as a JASSO Foundation Scholar studying Mahayana Buddhism and the Lotus Sutra’s recommendations for world peace. She has also worked with a number of NGOs in India and managed projects that involved poverty alleviation, entrepreneurship and media campaigns. She worked as a negotiator in the Track II peace processes to alleviate the violence that occurred in Kashmir during the Amarnath land crisis in 2008. Bringing her academic and professional interests together, she is currently working on a thesis that explores the intersection of religion, justice and minority relations in contemporary multicultural societies.
LEO VAN ARRAGON is a 3rd year PhD student in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Ottawa. His area of research, conducted under the supervision of Dr Lori Beaman, is the regulation of religion in public education and the issue of funding for non-Catholic faith based schools. This project follows his 37 year professional career as an educator in privately funded Christian schools in Ontario which included political advocacy work on behalf of faith based schools. His thesis, "The Ontario Election of 2007: Faith based schools and the boundaries of religious freedom", includes comparative work with the regulation of religion in other jurisdictions and fits under the wider research initiative, "The Religion and Diversity Project" directed by Dr. Beaman.
SEBASTIAN VELASSERY is Professor of Philosophy at Panjab University. Dr.Velassery's research areas include social philosophy, value theory and philosophy of culture. He writes in both English and Malayalam, and has published many articles in Malayalam on philosophical, literary and religious topics. Dr. Velassery is also a member of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, and is associated with the Centre for the Study of Culture and Values, both located in Washington DC. His publications in English include: Globalization and Cultural Identities: Philosophical Challenges and Opportunities (in press, Overseas Press); Cultural Creativity and Contemporary Changes: The Indian Mind (editor; in press, The Catholic University of America); Foundations of Indian Social Life: Cultural, Religious and Aesthetic (editor; Book Surge Publishers, 2008); Casteism and Human Rights: Toward An Ontology of the Social Order (Times Academic Publishing Group, 2005).
LINDA WOODHEAD is Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University (Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion). She is also Director of the £12m UK research programme ‘Religion and Society’. This consists of 75 separate research projects, which are run by academics across the UK. Her most recent book is Religion and Change in Modern Britain (edited with Rebecca Catto; Routledge, 2012). Other publications include A Sociology of Religious Emotions (with Ole Ris; OUP, 2010), The Spiritual Revolution. Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality (with Paul Heelas; Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), and Christianity: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2004).