South Asia Institute

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Coordinates: 49 ° 24 ′ 37 ″  N , 8 ° 41 ′ 24 ″  E

The South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University

The South Asia Institute (SAI) is an interdisciplinary center of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg for research and teaching on South Asia (i.e. India , Pakistan , Bangladesh , Nepal , Sri Lanka , Bhutan and the Maldives ). Due to the close linguistic and historical ties with the South Asian subcontinent, neighboring cultural regions such as Afghanistan or Tibet are also taken into account in the South Asia Institute. The South Asia Institute was founded in 1962. Since 2019, it has been located in the Bergheim district , where it was spatially merged with the other Asian studies institutes of the university as part of the Center for Asian Studies and Transcultural Studies (CATS).

Chairs and branches

As a central scientific institution at Heidelberg University, the South Asia Institute now has seven chairs, namely Development Economics, Ethnology, Geography, History of South Asia, Cultural and Religious History of South Asia (Classical Indology), New Language South Asian Studies (Modern Indology) and Political Science of South Asia. The South Asia Institute also cooperates particularly closely with those chairs at the University of Heidelberg that focus on South Asia. This applies in particular to the chairs of Global Art History, Visual and Media Anthropology and Buddhist Studies created within the framework of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” . The South Asia Institute thus combines social, economic and geosciences with historically and philologically oriented cultural studies.

The South Asia Institute has branches in New Delhi , Kathmandu and Colombo, as well as a representation in Islamabad . The special task of the South Asia Institute is to impart intercultural competence .

Former building

The former building of the South Asia Institute on the campus in Neuenheimer Feld

The building of the South Asia Institute, which was used until 2019, was located on the campus in Neuenheimer Feld . The building was built in 1970 by the architect Carlfried Mutschler and the artist Winfred Gaul added sculptures to the exterior. Christine Mäurer and Ludwig Schwöbel, Mutschler's former partners, converted the former lecture hall into a library in 2001.

Departments

Publications

The South Asia Institute publishes two research series:

  1. Contributions to South Asian Studies (BSAF)
  2. South Asian Studies (SAS)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c sai.uni-heidelberg.de: Structure and tasks , accessed on March 25, 2018.
  2. ↑ Press release from Heidelberg University on the opening of the Center for Asian Studies and Transcultural Studies.