SOAS University of London

Ethnographic approaches to infrastructure development

‘Roads’ is a five year ethnographic research project on infrastructure development in South Asia. The project, funded by the European Research Council, will provide the first ethnographic account of the culture of ‘road builders’, their knowledge practices, interrelations and motivations.

The history of physical yoga practice by means of philology

The Haṭha Yoga Project (HYP) is a five-year (2015-2020) research project funded by the European Research Council and based at SOAS, University of London which aims to chart the history of physical yoga practice by means of philology, i.e. the study of texts on yoga, and ethnography, i.e. fieldwork among practitioners of yoga.

The cultural and political impacts of Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes

This three-year project aims to document and analyse the cultural and political impacts of Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes. The project is structured along three distinct but inter-related themes. It will examine public discourse to understand social and political change; it will study efforts to reclaim and reinvent material culture; and it will study archival material to identify the permanent marks left by previous disasters.

An innovative approach to anti-corruption policy and practice

The Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) research consortium takes an innovative approach to anti-corruption policy and practice. With £6 million in funding over five years from UK aid, ACE is responding to the serious challenges facing people and economies affected by corruption by generating evidence that makes anti-corruption real and using those findings to help policymakers, business and civil society adopt new, feasible, high-impact strategies to tackle corruption.

The significance of the Gupta Age and its pan-Asian impacts

This is a major multidisciplinary research project which aims to re-vision the history of Asia in one of its most significant periods. The project focusses on the period of the Guptas (circa 320 to 550), a pivotal moment in the history of Asia, marked by an astonishing florescence in every field of endeavour.                                                                                                  

Improving the nutritional status of children in South Asia.

LANSA is a DFID-funded project, led by Bhavani Shankar and Nigel Poole, finding out how agriculture and agri-food systems can be better designed to advance nutrition with focus on policies, interventions and strategies that can improve the nutritional status of children in South Asia.

Multilingual Locals and Significant Geographies: a bottom-up approach to world literature

A European Research Council-funded research project led by Professor Francesca Orsini, Chair of the Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies (CCLPS), which explores the numerous, often fractured, and non-overlapping worlds of literature, and studies world literature from the perspective of multilingual societies.

War to peace transitions in Sri Lanka and Nepal

This project aims to generate a better understanding of contested war to peace transitions in Nepal and Sri Lanka with a view to improving statebuilding and peacebuilding interventions in post-war contexts in South Asia and beyond.