The Centre is part of many Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) which the University has signed with institutions within and outside India. The Centre for Political Studies has also been engaging with various universities and research institutions for holding joint events, faculty exchange and student exchange programs. CPS has a long term engagement with the Nirman Foundation.
Collaboration with Nirman Foundation (NF)
Since 2006, a generous Lifetime endowment fund has been created for the Centre by eminent political theorist Professor Lord Bhikhu Parekh. The NF Fund has been supporting four important programs and academic activities of the Centre:
NF merit-cum-means Scholarship to a limited number of MA 1st and 2nd year students based on a rigorous selection process;
NF Annual Lecture by a distinguished and renowned scholar;
Research Methodology Workshop for research students of Centre/JNU;
Workshop/Roundtable for the Centre’s faculty.
The aim of these activities is to give students and faculty of the Centre opportunities to engage with ongoing and new domains of research and theorisation in the discipline of Political Science and Social Sciences largely.
Over the past fifteen years, the Annual Nirman Foundation Lecture has been delivered by globally acclaimed scholars like Madhav Menon (2006), Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (2007), Upendra Baxi (2008), Marc Galanter (2009), Partha Chatterjee (2010), Charles Taylor (2011), Chetan Bhatt (2012), Sudipta Kaviraj (2014), Arindam Chakraborti (2015), V. Geetha (2016), Usha Ramanathan (2017), Rajeev Bhargava (2018), Prasenjit Duara (2019), Leela Fernandes (2020) and Arjun Appadurai (2021).
The Centre has also organized Roundtables around the work of leading social scientists. These events have given young scholars and faculty a chance to engage directly with these scholars.
Over the years, the Scholarship programme of the Nirman Foundation has helped a large number of students to pursue and complete their MA program successfully. Many of them went on to pursue their Doctoral studies in prestigious institutions in India and abroad.