Special Centre for the Study of North East India (SCSNEI) at JNU was established in the year 2018 as a new avatar of an earlier Programme of research and teaching. In this new form, SCSNEI not only expands its horizons, but also takes up unique steps that are rare in the country.

The Special Centre is conceived with a purpose to build corpus of academic works on North East India. It aims at holistic understanding of the region by bringing together different epistemic perspectives into a platform with strong commitment to multi-disciplinary research. While there are several researches already undertaken on the region in different Schools and Centres of the university, the unique experiment initiated by SCSNEI is the coming together of people and ideas for a better comprehension of the region. To fulfil this objective SCSNEI initiates a collaborative exercise to run its academic programmes with the partnership of eight Schools of the university, viz. School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies; School of Social Sciences; School of International Studies; School of Environmental Studies; School of Arts and Aesthetics; School of Life Sciences; School of Bio Technology; and School of Computational and Integrative Sciences. SCSNEI provides a common platform for faculty members working in the areas of humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and other allied disciplines, whose works are directly or indirectly linked to the studies on North East India. A further step towards fulfilling the objective is to expand the collaborative works beyond the bounds of JNU to other academic and research institutions in the country and abroad.

This area studies programme, conceptualised under special circumstances, owns added responsibility of locating North East India in the national and broader regional frames of reference. To bring the region to the centre of national discourses, SCSNEI has taken up activities of research and teaching that will not only familiarise North East India to the young academics, but also work towards positive intervention for the region and its people with an expectation of rich dividend. The Special Centre shall play the role of a catalyst towards policy intervention by developing new methods and approaches for human development and holistic growth. To fulfil these objectives, SCSNEI is committed to work closely with state institutions, corporate bodies, civil society organizations and discerning scholars.

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