CSA Welcomes New Affiliates

Elaine Fisher

Elaine joins Stanford University as Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and will be affiliated with the Center for South Asia. Her first book manuscript, Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South India, was recently released by the University of California Press in early 2017 and is part of the book series South Asia Across the Disciplines. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies

Saad Gulzar

Saad joins as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and will be affiliated with the Center for South Asia.. He uses field experiments and data from government programs to study the determinants of politician and bureaucratic effort toward citizen welfare. His research interests lie in the political economy of development and comparative politics, with a regional focus on South Asia. His work has been supported by grants from the International Growth Center, the Jameel Abdul Latif Poverty Action Lab's Governance Initiative, the World Bank, and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. Gulzar earned his Ph.D. from New York University in 2017. He previously studied at Columbia University, the National University of Singapore, and the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Maira Hayat

Maira joins Stanford University as a predoctoral student affiliated with the Department of Anthropology, the Woods Institute, and Center for South Asia. Hayat is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. She is currently writing her dissertation, “Ecologies of Water Governance in Pakistan: the Colony, the Corporation and the Contemporary.” The dissertation builds upon fieldwork in Pakistan and at international water fora, and archival research. It examines how projects of governance - bureaucratic, scientific, corporate - form and fall apart around water. Her previous research has focused on the lower courts and police in parts of the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, and (post)colonial statecraft in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. 

Reetika Khera

Reetika joins Stanford Humanities Center and Center for South Asia as a visiting external faculty fellow during the month of October. Reetika Khera is an Associate Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences department at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. She has been actively involved in working in the implementation of India's NREGA scheme. She has published research on analyzing the NREGA, Public Distribution System (PDS) and other socio-economic issues concerning India. One of her key projects is the "Group Measurement" of NREGA work - The Jalore Experiment. Reetika will be featured in several events on campus during her tenure. Please check back for more information on that soon.