Brown Family Chair
of South Asian History
Claremont McKenna College


Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1984

Honorary Director
Centre for Postcolonial Education, NIRMAN

 

Contact Information:
Claremont McKenna College
850 Columbia Ave
 Phone: (909) 607-0490
 E-mail: nkumar@claremontmckenna.edu

Biography:
My research interests include urbanism, education, community, and research methodology. I have had an interdisciplinary approach throughout beginning with my first research on artisans (indeed there was a research project before that on "Delhi Cloth Mills workers and the Congress" (M.Phil. thesis from JNU, Delhi)) on to my other projects on women, the family, and education. This has been accompanied by interest in questions of methodology, and how the disciplines can be brought to enlighten each other's procedure. From History and Anthropology, my interest has expanded into literature, folklore, and performance.

Having taught at various institutions in the USA, and being actively engaged in pedagogical innovation in India, my present work on education is multi-faceted in the extreme, including research and teaching in Indian schools and ethnography in American schools, plus archival work, text analyses, and social history.