Tripartite Research Partnership

The School of Advanced Study, University of London has formed a long-term partnership with Yale University and the National Institute of Advanced Studies to promote discussion, debate and joint research activities involving scholars at the three institutions and in their networks, and to disseminate the results of those efforts.

There is a great need for this. A few teams of leading researchers from the three countries, and the early formative activities by the partnership, have established that such collaborations hold great promise. But Indian scholars have far too little opportunity to engage in depth with academics and insights from leading Western research centres, and scholars in the West are only beginning to recognise the benefits to their own work which interactions with India's formidable research community offer.

Many of India's best researchers have found it difficult or impossible to gain adequate access to case studies, perspectives, methods and other ideas from the West (including Western analyses of other developing nations), so that they have been cut off from insights that emerge from comparative work in and on countries other than India. Scholars in the West have similarly lacked exposure to evidence and analyses from India and to Indian perspectives on important themes -- which can enrich their work. 

A compelling example of this sort of enrichment can be found in a recent book by two immensely distinguished political analysts/theorists from the U.S. and an eminent Indian colleague -- which provides a major contribution to democratic theory and comparative law/constitutionalism.

This tripartite partnership seeks to address these problems, and to provide scholars in all three countries with major new opportunities in this vein.