Professor of History and the Director of Center for Global Asia Tansen Sen has been awarded a three-year visiting fellowship (2026–2029) through the Nalanda Professorship in India-China Studies program at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. The fellowship supports sustained research on India-China topics and provides a stipend of S$60,000 per year, enabling Sen to spend up to 3.5 months at ARI each year to pursue his project.
Sen’s research project, titled “Southeast Asia between India and China: Mapping Shared Histories and Spaces,” examines how Southeast Asia has served as a dynamic zone of connection between two major Asian civilizations.
By tracing the movement of peoples, goods, and ideas across Southeast Asia from ancient times to the Bandung moment in 1955, the project highlights the region’s role as a vibrant crossroads in Asian history. It offers a historically grounded perspective on how Indic and Sinitic worlds encountered one another, how Southeast Asians shaped these interactions, and how these entangled histories continue to influence contemporary understandings of Asia. The project employs a multi-sited, interdisciplinary methodology that integrates archaeological investigation, archival research, and conceptual history.
“This fellowship will allow me to work closely with local archaeological findings and archival materials to reconstruct the historical processes through which Southeast Asian societies mediated exchanges between India and China across a broad chronological span—from early Buddhist and commercial networks to the twentieth-century political discourses that culminated in the Bandung Conference,” Sen said.
He added, “Given the Center for Global Asia’s emphasis on India–China interactions as a core research priority, the visiting fellowship will also create valuable opportunities for collaborative research and joint events and publications with the Asia Research Institute.”