Research Themes

  • Democracy and its Futures

    Research on democratic discourse and electoral politics brings together various faculty members who have organised global conversations on democracy and more recently begun work on ecologies of democracy and freedom of speech. The Centre’s Lokni...

  • Media, Information and Culture

    As the media move rapidly to expand their place in everyday life, the Centre’s faculty members have examined the sites of cinema, new media, and information cultures. The Centre’s Sarai programme, established in 2000, has initiated research ...

  • Diversity, Identity and Violence

    The Centre’s scholarship has effectively reviewed the theoretical and historical landscape relating to secularism, pluralism, ethnic violence and genocide. Faculty writing has argued that established modes of describing social reality obscure co...

  • Urban Transformation

    Cities have been of major interest to Centre faculty, leading to diverse interventions through research, writing, teaching and art practice. There have been significant attempts to theorise the complex experience of cities, pre-modern, colonial an...

  • Social Sciences in Indian Languages

    The Centre’s faculty has invested in speaking, writing, translating and publishing in Indic languages. The intent has been two-fold: to extend their outreach to the vast areas inhabited by non-English speakers and to forge the ground upon which ...

  • Publics and Policies

    For some decades now CSDS has contributed to thinking about policy issues such as the nature of Indian democracy, the distinctiveness of Indian secularism, and the drivers and sources of violence in Indian society. Since the 1980s some members of ...

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