The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out…

The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out…

In this chapter, I am examining the Pashtun nationalist claims in the context of the Afghanistan government’s historical resistance to officially recognizing the Durand Line. What has been the reaction of Afghanistan’s successive governments to the Durand Line? Can this resistance be characterized as a national…

Talk by Sadia Mahmood, South Asia Program, Cornell University

Mainstream historiography on South Asia has largely overlooked the afterlives of the colonial Enemy Property regime in postcolonial India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Drawing on archival records from Pakistan and India, as well as oral accounts from…

Saida Hodžić, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University

Saida Hodžić, associate professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, studies women’s rights activism, NGO advocacy, humanitarianism, and civic environmental activism. Her first book, The Twilight of Cutting:…

Talk by Aditya Bhattacharjee (Asian Studies, Cornell University)

The cultural affinities that have long connected South and Southeast Asia are particularly visible in Thailand, one of the first countries to recognize India after independence and a nation that occupies a prominent place both in India’s…

"The Southeast Asian Language Council (SEALC) Projects, 2019–2024: Cornell Collaborations"
Yu Yu Khaing, Jolanda Pandin, Hannah Phan, Thess Savella, and Thúy Tranviet
Cornell University

The Southeast Asian Language Council (SEALC) is a national organization that promotes and coordinates…

This article examines how international monitoring affects legal accountability for human rights violations. International organizations often publicize human rights violations to pressure non-compliant states to change their behavior; however, recent research suggests that publicity can prompt intransigence or…

In the late 1990s, as the hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) began, stories of past abuse, including sexual violence, within the exiled camps of the African National Congress (ANC) emerged. Despite women alluding to or directly describing violence they had suffered within the ANC,…

Presented by Alex V. Barnard, Assistant Professor of Sociology at New York University (NYU)

Is there an underlying order to how societies classify, treat, and control madness? Both popular and scholarly portrayals of contemporary mental health systems emphasize service fragmentation and inter-professional…

Book talk by Shani Rohit De (History, Yale University) and Ornit Shani (Asian Studies, University of Haifa)

In this paradigm-shifting history, Rohit De and Ornit Shani re-examine the making of the Indian constitution from the perspective of the country's people. In a departure from dominant approaches…

Nasser Abourahme is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at Bowdoin College. Prof. Abourahme's research is in and between comparative colonial history, political geography, and political theory, specifically, borders and migration; histories of encampment and carcerality; settler…

About the speaker

Herbert Lin is a senior research scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His work focuses on the national security impact of emerging technologies, especially digital technologies such as cyber…

Talk by Llerena Guiu Searle (Anthropology, University of Rochester)

In order to build a more just world order, philosopher Olúfémi Táíwo argues that we must contend with the fact that our current social order builds on relations of colonialism that did not end with colonial independence in the 1940s-1960s.…

The Southeast Asia Program’s annual graduate conference offers a space for scholars of Southeast Asia to share new work, receive feedback, and engage with peers and faculty across disciplines.

This year’s special-format conference will feature a mix of panel presentations and individual talks from current…

Talk by Karen Donoghue (Journalism and Mass Communication at North Eastern Hill University)

In an era marked by migration, identity and community dynamics are constantly remade, throwing into sharp relief questions of belonging that must be addressed through a post-nationalist lens. My own scholarly focus…

Nebula and Ursula K. Le Guin Award winning author Vajra Chandrasekera discusses his writing with Anindita Banerjee, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, and Suman Seth, Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow and Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science.

Vajra Chandrasekera is from…

The Latina/o Studies Program Fridays with Faculty luncheon seminar offers an opportunity for Latina/o and non-Latina/o students of all levels and disciplines to meet faculty and administrators from across the university for informal conversation about their current research/work in progress. All welcome!

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Talk by Anu Ahmed (Anthropology, University of Rochester)

The Republic of Maldives has been undergoing rapid social transformations since the country’s democratization in 2008. A decade later yielded the Maldives’ ‘psy’ turn when, starting at the end of 2018, the incoming President prioritized mental health…

Talk by Ateya Khorakiwala (Architecture, Columbia University)

What architectural technologies were deployed in response to colonial famine? A history of food is, at its most radical, a history of the production of poverty as a systematic condition and an institutional discourse. This paper seeks to locate…

Any poem, any language! The Language Resource Center celebrates National Poetry Month. Sweet Poetry is an evening event in April named for enjoying tasty treats while sharing poems in different languages.

Join us on Wednesday, April 15, 2026 at 5:30 pm in the Klarman Hall Atrium. During the event, Cornell…

Talk by Rahul Sagar (Political Science, NYU Abu Dhabi)

Letters to an Indian Raja (1891) was the first work of political theory to be published in modern India. It advised Maharajas to introduce liberal values and constitutional government in the self-governing Native States. Such reform would, it argued,…

IES Luigi Einaudi Distinguished Lecture

Further details TBA.