UW-Madison Center for South Asia
Pre-dissertation Travel Grant Award 2008-2009

Adam Auerbach Department of Political Science Project: Democratic Decentralization, Party Politics, and Ethnic Fractionalization in India The central focus of Adam's research con-cerns the manner in which the process of democratic decen-tralization in patronage democracies alters the logic of group formation at the local level and the aggregation of identities and interests in coalition politics to higher levels of govern-ance.

Sarbani Chakraborty Department of Curriculum and Instruction, School of Education Project: Exploration of the status of government school teachers and their teaching: A study of three government schools in India Sarbani's research questions: Why are government schoolteachers in India not 'teaching'? She proposes a sociological re-reading of this phenomenon of not-teaching in government schools by exploring the social and politico-economic processes of the elementary-school teaching at work, within the dominant discourse of efficiency, effectiveness and student outcomes.

UW-Madison Global Studies SKJ Fellowship Award Winners 2009 Adam Auerbach, PhD student in the Department of Political Science, received an Internship Award to India. Miriam Thangaraj, PhD student in Education Policy Studies, received a Travel Award to India. Miriam investigates how the concept of 'vulnerability' is built into development and educational projects. Division of International Studies Graduate Student International Field Research Awards 2009 Nayantara Mukerji, PhD student in the Department of Political Science. Nayantara's research focuses on comparative economic development in India and China, particularly with respect to business-state relations, and contestation around Special Economic Zones (SEZs).