Such a significant event is fittingly sponsored by two of the premiere institutes for South Asian studies in the world: the South Asia Institute at the University of Heidelberg and the South Asia Initiative at Harvard University. And it is made possible thanks to the generous financial support of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, the Harvard University Asia Center, the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
The South Asia Institute at Heidelberg was founded in 1962. Since that time, its History department has made a tradition of studying the rich dynamics of encounter between South Asia and Europe. Gita Dharampal-Frick, head of the History department, views transnational scholarship on South Asia as crucial for the furthering of current historiography. This conference is one important way the Institute will encourage such scholarship.
Harvard University’s South Asia Initiative under the leadership of Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, also sees this two-session conference as of major importance for contemporary scholarship. Established in 2001, the Harvard South Asia Initiative has already set the tone for American research on South Asia by supporting work on the intellectual history of South Asia from a transnational perspective. In 2002, the Initiative organized a conference on notions of identity and visions of political organization outside the construct of the nation-state. A recent innovative project is a study group established in collaboration with Cambridge University for research into the global exchange of ideas. Together with the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg, both prestigious institutions constitute fitting homes for the sessions of this conference, and their joint commitment to the conference’s realization points to the importance and salience of the conference themes.