South Asia Center Alumni (Ph.D. Graduates Listed by year of graduation):
Anand Alan Yang, PhD in History, 1976
Dissertation Title: Control and Conflict in an Agrarian Society: A Study of Saran District, 1866-1920
Current Position: Professor of History, University of Washington, Seattle
Philip F. McEldowney, PhD in History, 1980
Dissertation Title: Colonial Administration and Social Developments in Middle India: The Central Provinces, 1861-1921.
Last Position: South Asia Librarian at the University of Virginia
Christopher V. Hill, PhD in History, 1987
Last Position: Retired as Professor of History at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Dissertation Title: History in Motion: The Social Ecology of Purnia District, 1770-1960
William Ralph Pinch, PhD in History, 1990
Current Position: Professor of History, Wesleyan University
Dissertation Title: Being Vaishnava, Becoming Kshatriya: Culture, Belief and Identity in North India, 1800-1940
Wendy Faye Singer, PhD in History, 1991
Dissertation Title: Creating History: Oral Narrative and the Political Process of History-Making in Rural North India (1781-1942)
Current Position: Professor of History, Kenyon College
Ruhi Grover, PhD in History, 1997
Dissertation Title: Rhythms of the Timber Trade: Forests in the Himalayan Punjab, 1850-1925
Last Position: University of Otago, New Zealand
David Campion, PhD in History, 2002
Dissertation Title: Watchmen of the Raj: The United Provinces Police, 1870-1971 and the Dilemmas of Colonial Policing in British India
Current Position: Professor of History, Lewis & Clark College
Purnima Dhavan, PhD in History, 2003
Dissertation Title: The Warrior's Way: The Making of the Eighteenth-Century Khalsa Panth
Current Position: Associate Professor of History, University of Washington, Seattle
Douglas Duckworth, PhD in Religious Studies, 2005
Dissertation Title: Buddha-Nature and a Dialectic of Presence and Absence in the Works of Mi-pham
Current Position: Professor of Religion, Temple University
David Donald Drewes, PhD in Religious Studies, 2006
Dissertation Title: Mahayana Sutras and Their Preachers: Rethinking the Nature of a Religious Tradition
Current Position: Professor of Religion, University of Manitoba
Yaroslav Komarovski, PhD in Religious Studies, 2007
Dissertation Title: Echoes of Empty Luminosity: Reevaluation and Unique Interpretation of Yogãcãra and Nihsvabhãvavãda Madhyamaka by the Fifteenth Century Tibetan Thinker Sãkya Mchog Idan
Current Position: Professor of Classics & Religious Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Hillary Jean Bracken, PhD in History, 2007
Dissertation Title: Maternity and Child Welfare Reform in North India, 1900-1947
Current Position: Associate Director, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)
Kelli Lynn Joseph, PhD in Politics, 2008
Dissertation Title: The Politics of Power: Electricity Reform in India
Current Position: Senior Fellow, Electricity Market Design, World Resources Institute
Tsering Wanhchuk, PhD in Religious Studies, 2009
Dissertation Title: The Uttaratantra in the Age of Argumentation: Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen and His Fourteenth-Century Interlocutors on Buddha-Lineage
Current Position: Professor of Religious Studies, University of San Francisco
Tarun Jain, PhD in Economics, 2009
Dissertation Title: Institutions and Incentives in Developing Countries
Current Position: Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad
Abhishek Chatterjee, PhD in Politics, 2010
Dissertation Title: Rulers and Capital in Historical Perspectives: State Formation and Financial Development in India and the United States
Current Position: Associate Professor of South & Southeast Asian Studies University of Montana
Louis-Dominique Dubeau, PhD in Religious Studies, 2011
Dissertation Title: The Shared Ontological Principles of Madhyamaka and Abhidharma
Last Position: Digital Humanities Specialist, Mangalam Research Center for Buddhist Studies
Holly Donahue Singh, PhD in Anthropology, 2011
Dissertation Title: Aulad: Infertility and the Meanings of Children in North India
Current Position: Professor of Instruction, University of South Florida
Alberto Todeschini, PhD in Religious Studies, 2011
Dissertation Title: Debating Buddhists: The Abhidharmasamauccaya on Debate and Argumentation
Current Position:
Claire Snell-Rood, PhD in Anthropology, 2011
Dissertation Title: “I Have My Own Two Hands”: Re-Interpreting the Risks of Slum Life in Delhi and Cultivating the Self Through Neighbourhood, Citizenship, Kinship, and Health
Current Position: Lead Product Researcher, Rippling
Syed Rizwan Zamir, PhD in Religious Studies, 2011
Dissertation Title: Rethinking, Reconfiguring and Popularizing Islamic Tradition: Religious Thought of a Contemporary Indian Shi’ite Scholar
Current Position: Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Davidson College
David Strohl, PhD in Anthropology, 2011
Dissertation Title: A Respect for Difference: The Shi’a Ismaili Khojas of Mumbai
Last Position: Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Colby College
Sisir Debnath, PhD in Economics, 2013
Dissertation Title: Three Empirical Essays in Development Economics in India
Current Position: Associate Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi
Arsalan Khan, PhD in Anthropology, 2014
Dissertation Title: Islam, Ritual and the Ethical Life: Dawat in the Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan
Current Position: Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Katarina Turpeinen, PhD in Religious Studies, 2015
Dissertation Title: Vision of Samantabhadra - the Dzokchen Anthology of Rindzin Godem
Last Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California Berkeley
James Pierce, PhD in Religious Studies, 2016
Dissertation Title: Exaltation of the Goddess: Narrative Expressions of the Feminine Divine in the Devīpurāṇa
Current Position: South Asian Studies Librarian, University of Pennsylvania
Marina Omar, PhD in Politics, 2016
Dissertation Title: Why Affiliate? Independent Candidates in Emerging Democracies: The Case of Afghanistan Since 2001
Last Position: Assistant Professor, Mary Baldwin University
Dannah Dennis, PhD in Anthropology, 2017
Dissertation Title: Nepali First: Nationalism and Citizenship in a New Secular Republic
Current Position: Program Officer, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University
Jap Nanak Makkar, PhD in English, 2018
Dissertation Title: Global Narrative in Electronic Modernity
Current Position: Assistant Professor of English, University of Kentucky
Adam Newman, PhD in Religious Studies, 2019
Dissertation Title: Constructing Sacred Space in Mewar: Text, Temple, and Landscape in the Fifteenth-Century Ekaliṅgamāhāmatya
Current Position: Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Jue Liang, PhD in Religious Studies, 2020
Dissertation Title: Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Life, Lives and Afterlife of the Buddhist Saint Yeshe Tsogyel
Current Position: Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Case Western Reserve University
Moogdho Mahzab, PhD in Economics, 2021
Dissertation Title: Tax-evading Politicians, Public Goods Provision and Public Health
Current Position: Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Divya Pandey, PhD in Economics, 2021
Dissertation Title: Essays on Gender Inequality and Human Capital Formation
Current Position: Senior Evaluation Specialist, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation
Swati Chawla, PhD in History, 2022
Dissertation Title: Himalayan Strivings: Bhutan, Sikkim, and Tibet at the Twilight of Empire
Current Position: Associate Professor of Liberal Arts and Humanities, O. P. Jindal Global University
Dipsikha Thakur, PhD in English, 2022
Dissertation Title: Ghostly Encounters: Transnational Gothic and the Twenty-First Century Global Novel
Current Position:
Samuel Grimes, PhD in Religious Studies, 2022
Dissertation Title: Resilience and Reinvigoration: Histories of the Buddhism of the Nepal Valley
Current Position: Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Fairfield University
Naomi Worth, PhD in Religious Studies, 2022
Dissertation Title: The Enlightenment of the Body: The Theory and Practice of Winds and Channels Yoga at Namdroling Monastery and Nunnery in South India
Current Position: Spanish Interpreter, East Hampton Union Free School District
Md Amzad Hossain, PhD in Economics, 2022
Dissertation Title: Essays on Development and Education Economics
Current Position: Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Arkansas
Benjamin Helms, PhD in Economics, 2022
Dissertation Title: Global Economic Integration and Politics in Emerging Economies
Current Position: Assistant Professor of International Affairs, Texas A&M University
Meghan Hartman, PhD in Religious Studies, 2023
Dissertation Title: Skeins of the Imagination: Lyric Lifeforms and Virtual Reality Environments in the Poetry and Literary Criticism of Miraji (1912-1949)
Current Position: Term Assistant Professor of Religion, Barnard College
Ishita Gambhir, PhD in Economics, 2024
Dissertation Title: Essays in Development Economics
Current Position: Manager, Research and Training Programs, Centre for Civil Society, Delhi
William Chenault, PhD in Economics, 2024
Dissertation Title: Essays on the Environmental Economics of Land Use
Current Position: Economist at ISO New England
Yutong Chen, PhD in Economics, 2024
Dissertation Title: Three Essays on Development Economics
Current Position: Assistant Professor of Economics at University of Texas at Arlington
T. C. A. Achintya, PhD in History, 2025
Dissertation Title: Practitioners of the Law: Legal Professionals in British South Asia 1770-1870
Current Position: Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Virginia
Matthew Leveille, PhD in Religious Studies, 2025
Dissertation Title: Poetry and Praise, Prayer and Imagination: Illuminating Hindu Stotras Through a Sympathetic Reading of Appayya Diksita's Varadarajastava
Current Position:
Tarushi Sonthalia, PhD in English, 2025
Dissertation Title: Speculative (Un)worldings: The Many Worlds of Caribbean and South Asian Speculative Fiction
Current Position:
Ilma Qureshi, PhD in Religious Studies, 2025
Dissertation Title: Poetry as a Way of Knowing: Love, Language, and Poetic Form in Amir Khusraw and Fakhr al-Din Iraqi’s Works
Current Position: Gen AI Data Labeling Analyst, Meta
Avantika Prabhakar, PhD in Economics, 2025
Dissertation Title: Essays on Institutions and Development
Current Position: Assistant Professor of Economics, Ashoka University
Ritika Gupta, PhD in Economics, 2025
Dissertation Title: Bridging the Gender Gap: Affirmative Action, Social Norms and Women Empowerment
Current Position: Assistant Professor of Economics, Wageningen University
Uzma Zafar, PhD in Anthropology, 2025
Dissertation Title: Violent Legalities: Bureaucratized Rights and Transgender Identity in Pakistan
Current Position: Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Rochester
Eric Robertson, PhD in Economics, 2026
Dissertation Title: Essays in Development Economics
Current Position: