Visiting Fellowship for Pakistan Offers Mutual Benefits

This article first appears in the OSGA Summer 2018 Newsletter.

OSGA is from 2019 to host the Charles Wallace Trust Visiting Fellowship for Pakistan (previously hosted by the Department of Politics and International Relations).

The Fellowship, which is awarded annually, is sponsored by the Charles Wallace Pakistan Trust in co-operation with the British Council in Pakistan. It enables a Pakistani academic or professional to undertake a working visit of up to three months to Oxford’s Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme (CSASP) with the aim of broadening his or her research experience, professional knowledge and contacts. The Fellowship is intended to mutually benefit both the Fellow and the Programme through academic exchange.

The Fellow is required to pursue an independent study project in tune with the Fellowship’s aim of advancing the understanding of contemporary problems and issues facing Pakistan, widely conceived. Priority is given to applicants who have not had opportunities to study outside Pakistan.

‘A key priority for CSASP in the next five years is to create greater capacity for broad and deep teaching, research, and engagement collaborations with individuals and institutions in Pakistan,’ says Professor Kate Sullivan de Estrada, who directs the programme. ‘The Charles Wallace Visiting Fellowship for Pakistan is a welcome boost to these endeavours and we look forward to intensifying both our links with Pakistan and our activity in Pakistan studies through the Fellowship.’

OSGA’s ongoing commitment to Pakistan studies was reflected in May by a one-day conference on ‘New Directions in Studies of Pakistan’ organised by Oxford academics from OSGA, the Faculty of Oriental Studies and the Asian Studies Centre of St Antony’s College, in collaboration with colleagues from SOAS (University of London) and the University of Cambridge.

As well as offering graduate students an opportunity to present their research to an audience of peers and established scholars, the conference aimed to encourage new and innovative ways of looking at Pakistan and the development of comparative perspectives. Themes addressed included the history of post-colonial archaeology in Pakistan and gendering Pakistani history in the aftermath of independence.