Dr. Vasanthi Srinivasan is a Reader in Political Science at the University of Hyderabad. She earned her Ph.D. at Carleton University, Ottawa where she worked on the notions of freedom and community in select western and Indian thinkers. She has previously taught at Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi and the College of Humanities in Ottawa. Her research interests are mainly in the areas of comparative political thought and the interface between technology and politics.

D. Shyam Babu is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and also serves as a key advisor to the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI). He is a research affiliate for CASI's Dalit research program. While a visiting scholar at CASI Dr. Babu was a Fellow at the New Delhi-based Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies. His areas of interest include arms control, nuclear proliferation, reforms and social justice in India with special focus on Dalits.

Eswaran Sridharan is the Director and Chief Executive Officer of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIASI), in New Delhi, from its inception in 1997, and was earlier with the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. A CASI Non-Resident Scholar, he is a political scientist with research interests in elections, party systems and coalition politics, political economy of development, and international relations theory and Indian foreign policy.

Gopal Guru is a professor of social and political theory in the Center of Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is the author of numerous articles on Dalits, women, politics and philosophy.

We are pleased that Dr. Guru will be in residence at Penn as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India from June 1 - July 31, 2009.

Atul Kohli is the David K.E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His principal research interests are in the areas of comparative political economy with a focus on developing countries.

Bharat Karnad is a Research Professor in National Security Studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He is the author of India's Nuclear Policy [Praeger, 2008], Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy (now in its second edition) [Macmillan India, 2002, 2005] and author-editor of Future Imperiled: India's Security in the 1990s and Beyond[Viking-Penguin India, 1994].

Harsh V. Pant teaches at King's College London in the Department of Defence Studies and is an Associate with the King's Centre of Science and Security Studies. Recently, he has been a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. His research is focused on Asia-Pacific security issues. His recent books include Contemporary Debates in Indian Foreign and Security Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and Indian Foreign Policy in a Unipolar World (Routledge, 2009).

The Honorable Jaswant Singh is among the most respected names in India’s public life, and in the world of diplomacy.  He is a Member of Parliament, in the Lok Sabha.  Mr.

Apoorvanand Jha is a professor of Hindi at the University of Delhi. He was born and raised in Siwan, Bihar and received his undergraduate education from Bihar University. He earned his Masters and Ph.D. from Patna University and has worked on the development of Marxist Aesthetics in Hindi Literature.

Kusuma Satyanarayana is an Associate Professor and the Head of the Department of Cultural Studies at English and Foreign Languages University (EFL-U) in Hyderabad. He earned his M.A. and M. Phil from the University of Hyderabad and subsequently earned his Ph.D. from EFL University.