ARCHIVED MEDIA RELEASE
PA/13/07 10 August 2007
Australia-India Council announces Australian Studies Fellowships Awards for 2007-08
A professor each from the SNDT University and Burdwan University; two research scholars from JNU, and one each from the Jadavpur University and Burdwan University, figure in the list of six successful Australian studies fellowship awardees for the year 2007-08.
In announcing the awards, Mr Darren Gribble, Chairman, Australia-India Council (AIC), congratulated those who had gained fellowships. “The fellowship program has been growing from strength to strength and continues to play an important role in consolidating academic and research linkages between Australia and India,” said Mr Gribble.
The AIC fellowship acquaints the visiting fellows with select Australian studies centers in Australia and allows them to pursue individual research over a period of a maximum of 10 weeks. The fellowship program is managed by a consortium of Australian universities on behalf of the AIC.
The fellowships cover a wide range of study areas including Australian literature, politics and history; environment and health; film media, communications and performing arts; issues relating to Indigenous Australians, ethnicities and multiculturalism; tourism and gender studies.
Initiated in 2003 as a part of the AIC Australian studies program initiative, a total of 21 academics and senior research scholars from Indian universities have undertaken the fellowship program in Australia.
Speaking at the first ever meet of the alumni of the AIC Fellowship program held in New Delhi recently, Australian High Commissioner to India, Mr John McCarthy, welcomed the idea of an alumni association and said, “such institutionalisation will not only provide a platform to connect and network, but also lead to enrichment of ideas through cross-disciplinary connections. Growing interest in Australian studies in India, and the significant increase in the number of Indian students studying in Australian institutions, was both indicative of growing academic linkages, he added.
The six successful AIC fellowship awardees include two senior and four junior fellows:
Senior Fellows
- Professor Veena Poonacha, Research Centre for Women’s Studies, SNDT University, Mumbai. Research Proposal - Domestic Violence among the Indian Diaspora Community in Australia: Women’s Survival Strategies.
- Professor Rabindranath Bhattacharyya, Department of Political Science, Burdwan University, West Bengal. Research Proposal: Australian Federalism in a Multicultural Society: A Model of Good Governance.
Junior Fellows
- Debashree Dattaray, Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Research proposal: Indigenous literatures of India, Canada and Australia: A Comparative View
- Rahul Mishra, SIS, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Research Proposal: "Role of Civil Society in making of the Nuclear Disarmament Policy of Australia and its Comparison with India"
- Shipra Bhatia, School of Law & Governance, JNU, New Delhi. Research Proposal - Digital Divide amongst Aboriginals in Australia.
- Sagar Dan, Department of English, Burdwan University, West Bengal. Research Proposal - Contestations and Negotiations: Identity and Self-Creation of Aborigine Youth in Mudrooroo’s Novels
Fellowship details on the AIC website: www.dfat.gov.au/aic. For more details, please contact Ms Asha Das, Country Manager, Australia-India Council, on (0) 98108 60451.