The School of Humanities and Social Sciences aspires to be globally recognised for research and teaching excellence that contributes to an inclusive and sustainable society
Our research, teaching, and creative activities work together to enable students to become engaged critical thinkers and foster research areas of faculty
Professor Rajat Kathuria Dean, School of Social Sciences & Humanities
Leading public policy expert
Current programs Undergraduate • • • •
Economics English Design International Relations
Masters
Doctoral
Economics Fine Arts English Joint MA with SOAS, London in Urban Sociology • MA in Rural Management
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Economics History Sociology International Relations
Key research areas Art, Media and Performance
Documentary Practice
Art in Public Domain
Dance
Recognizing the potential of the shift in documentary culture from traditional single-channel broadcast format, the contemporary media/art landscape today encompasses film, photography, performance, and installation. The department actively encourages and supports research that explores “new ecologies” of documentary practice and its “expanded” forms.
Intervention and Action: The focus is to generate critical, historically reflective, and socio-politically conscious art practice within a broad parameter of creative engagement in the public domain. This encourages interdisciplinary, non-instrumental, collaborative, community based, dialogic, participatory modes of framing and engagement with “public domain”.
Research in the department locates dance as an embodied knowledge system, braiding dance scholarship and practice to generate critical debate about what it means to dance in the contemporary moment.
Key research areas Design
Smart Connected Products
Visual Narrative & Cognition
Future Technologies in Design
The Internet of Things (IoT) enables objects and devices to connect and communicate with each other, creating opportunities for new design research areas. Designing smart products requires a thoughtful and user-centered approach, considering both the physical aspects of the product and the digital elements that enable connectivity and data exchange.
The focus is on understanding how cognition influences perceptions in the context of visual storytelling. Cognitive principles help to understand the interaction among visual elements in a narrative; further applying those understandings in design processes enhance the effectiveness of conveying information, evoking emotions, and engaging audiences with a narrative.
One of the most promising areas of research in design is to understand the role of future technologies (like Generative Design, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT, 3D Printing and Additive Technologies, VR/AR/MR/XR, etc.) on the practice of design and its applications in developing products and services for the people.
Key research areas English
World Literature & Translation Studies The body of work scans through the dialogues with postcolonial and postmodernist theories or the writing by the most prolific authors. Research interests include exploring ideas of cultural heritage, queer studies, cognitive poetics, epics, and national literature with an overview of major historical eras studied in a world or generic context.
Digital Humanities
Creative Writing
The questions in this field are many: can we teach a computer to read and understand human language? From courses that teach students how to use computational methods to examine literature and literary questions to studies that discuss the effect of technology on our society, the department is committed to creating new spaces for inquiry within the umbrella of English Literary Studies.
The department has considerable expertise in creative writing prose– writing novels, short stories, memoirs, and creative nonfiction. Faculty have published novels, short stories, and short nonfiction pieces in prestigious publications across the globe.
Key research areas History and Archaeology
Pre-Colonial Literary and Material Histories
Archaeology, Museums, and Visual Cultures
Modern & Contemporary Histories
These include areas of research that span a broad time-period such as precolonial literary cultures, epigraphy, the study of political and economic structures, social formations, and cultural forms in the 15th-18th centuries, networks of mobility in the Ottoman, Mughal, and European empires.
This research seeks to understand conceptions of landscapes in early and medieval India, cultural heritage, and the emergence of archaeologies of heritagemaking within post-colonial South Asia. Various projects draw upon advances in archaeological techniques such as surveys, excavations and laboratory analyses alongside visual analyses and museum studies.
The areas of research encompass social, economic, urban, intellectual, environmental, gender, education, and childhood- pertaining to modern and contemporary South Asian history and beyond. It includes scholarship and teaching on colonial and post-colonial societies, concepts, categories, and networks of knowledge production and circulation at a micro and macro level.
Key research areas International Relations & Governance Studies
Chinese Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy
Global Order and International Relations
Environment and Governance Studies
Research in the department focusses on China-South Asia relations, SinoIndian border areas, Indian and Chinese worldviews, and centre-province relations in China. International and comparative political economy are investigated with an emphasis on China and the developing world, as well as international negotiations and global economic governance.
Interests encompass disciplinary histories of International Relations (IR) with a particular focus on India; theories of IR especially vis-à-vis the global South; the intersections of international law and world politics and the study of international organizations and global governance. The historical and colonial constitution of global order and the entanglements of race, religion, gender, caste, and class are also pursued.
Research in the area focusses on Agricultural and Rural Innovation, Institutional Economics, STS (Science, Technology, Society Studies), and Environment and Governance Studies, with a focus on the Himalayan Region in Asia.
Center for Himalayan Studies
Bringing together scientists, engineers, social scientists and cultural studies scholars, the Center contributes to research, teaching and public policy in unique and significant ways. Economy | Environment | Geopolitics | Borders and Identities 12
Rural Management Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence launched a 2-year MA in Rural Management program in September 2023. This is a one-of-a-kind multidisciplinary program, the likes of which do not exist anywhere else in the country.
Congratulations Dr. Himanshu Kulkarni, Rural Management
Congratulations
Professor Atul Bhalla, Art, Media, Performance Rockefeller Bellagio Residency in Art, February 2025
Congratulations
Dr. Punarjit Roychowdhury Economics
Prof. M.J. Manohar Rao Young Economist Award 2021, Indian Econometric Society
Books By Faculty Tracing Hindi print culture in post-Independence India Dr. Aakriti Mandhwani, Associate Professor, Department of English, in her book, ‘Everyday Reading: Middlebrow Magazines and Book Publishing in Post-Independence India,’ discusses the emergence of commercially successful print culture in Hindi following India’s Independence. These narratives articulated alternatives to dominant national narratives of the times. The book published by UMass Press (global edition) and Speaking Tiger Books (South Asia edition), 2024, defines how middlebrow magazines — such as Delhi Press’s Sarita — and the first paperbacks in Hindi — Hind Pocket Books —cultivated new reading practices, allowing them to reimagine what it meant to be a citizen.
Books By Faculty Reading the fine print on women journalists in Victorian era Uncovering lost or ignored stories from women’s history is a passion for Dr. Teja Varma Pusapati, Associate Professor, Department of English. Her book, ‘Model Women of the Press: Gender, Politics and Women’s Professional Journalism, 1850– 1880 (New York: Routledge, 2024),’ offers the first extended account of the rise of ‘model women of the press’: Victorian women who not only stormed the male bastions of social and political journalism but also presented themselves as upholders of the highest standards of professional journalistic practice.
Books By Faculty The different realities of education in colonial Kerala The book, ‘Contested Childhoods: Caste and Education in Colonial Kerala (Cambridge University Press, 2024),’ by Dr. Divya Kannan, Assistant Professor, Department of History and Archaeology, critically explores the intertwined histories of education and childhood in the princely states of Travancore and Cochin, as well as in British-ruled Malabar. It foregrounds the tensions between the idealised notion of childhood as a protected time for learning and the harsh realities faced by marginalised children who were often relegated to separate educational spaces. The role of European Protestant missionaries in shaping educational opportunities for impoverished children in Kerala is central to this narrative.
Edited volumes: 2024
Publications
The only university in Delhi-NCR to have an archaeology laboratory The ‘Archaeology Lab’ houses materials from sites from various parts of India, some of which are on display. Archaeologists in the Department utilize this Lab for their research and instruction.
The only university in Delhi-NCR to have an archaeology laboratory
Students work with materials in the Lab with faculty supervision. Archaeological training through ceramics workshops, Geographic Information Systems workshops and regular teaching are conducted in the Lab.
Upcoming conferences Workshop on Economic Design (WED25) January 25 Co-hosted with ISI-Delhi and Stony Brook Center for Game Theory.
Keynote speaker: Robert Aumann (Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2005)
Upcoming conferences The Biopolitics of Global Health After Covid19, December 2024 Keynote speaker: Veena Das Johns Hopkins University
Upcoming conferences Fourth Macroeconomics Conference, 17 and 18 January 2025
Shiv Nadar University partnership leaders § Rakesh Ganguly Rakesh.ganguly@snu.edu.in § Deepa Hazrati deepa.hazrati@snu.edu.in
Let’s collaborate
§ Vinnie Mathur vinnie.mathur@snu.edu.in § Anuradha Manjul anuradha.manjul@snu.edu.in § Harshita Tripathi harshita.tripathi@snu.edu.in