Singapore, Jan 10: Iqbal Singh Sevea, an Indian-origin scholar and director of the Singaporean think-tank Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), has set a target for the organisation to become an important hub for research on South Asia in Southeast Asia.
Sevea, 47, is a Singaporean Associate Professor who has been teaching Indian (South Asian) history and politics for over 14 years in universities in Singapore, the UK and the US.
He took charge as the director of ISAS on January 1.
Sevea took over from Professor C Raja Mohan, who held ISAS directorship over the past four years.
“One immediate target is to establish ISAS as an important hub for research on South Asia in Southeast Asia… as South Asia and the world evolve, ISAS will continue to expand, review and refine its areas of research,” he said, adding that it will ensure its relevance and cutting-edge thrust.
“We will be attuned to researching on areas like tracking the digitisation of economies in South Asia; analysing ongoing technological revolutions, including the realm of space technology; reviewing the evolving landscape of multilateral and minilateral institutions; studying issues related to sustainability and climate change; and tracing South Asia’s engagement with Southeast Asia within the terrain of wider global shifts,” he said.
The mission of ISAS is to produce research on contemporary South Asia and to promote an understanding of South Asia and to communicate knowledge and insights about it to policy makers, the business community, academia and civil society in Singapore and beyond, said Sevea, whose parentage lineage is from Urdu- and Gurmukhi-educated grandparents of pre-partitioned Punjab.
Sevea spent a considerable amount of time researching in various archives in India during his PhD and attended several conferences in India over the years, ISAS said on Monday.
He is an internationally recognised scholar of contemporary and modern South Asia whose core research focuses on South Asian politics, social and political thought and governance.
He is the current Vice-President of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. From 2012 to 2021, he was an Associate Professor with the Department of History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He has also served on the committee of the American Institute of Indian Studies, said ISAS.
Sevea holds a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in History from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and a master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. (PTI)
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