Applications for Workshop

Request for Applications

History Dissertation Workshop, Islamabad, December 19-21, 2011

The American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS) in collaboration with the HEC is pleased to invite proposals for a dissertation workshop for doctoral and M. Phil. students in history in Pakistan. The AIPS, established in 1973, is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization whose mission is to encourage and support research on issues relevant to Pakistan and the promotion of scholarly exchange between the United States and Pakistan. AIPS aims to facilitate scholarship within academe in Pakistan in various disciplines through the holding of dissertation workshops. This dissertation workshop is for doctoral students in history whose research is focused on the history of South Asia. It will be run by the eminent historian, Dr. Yasmin Saikia, who holds the endowed Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies at Arizona State University, with the participation of Pakistani historian Dr. Tanvir Anjum, Quaid-e-Azam University.

This workshop intends to bring together M.Phil and doctoral students in Pakistan who are developing dissertation proposals or are in early phases of research or dissertation writing focused on South Asian history and who seek to develop richer, more subtle or robust understandings of their fields. It intends to engage aspiring scholars and assist them in such things as developing and reformulating research questions, placing research within theoretical contexts, facilitating the organization and structure of the dissertation, and sharing global norms of scholarship in research, writing and citation structures.

The workshop will be limited to 12 students, ideally from a broad array of universities within Pakistan. Each workshop will last three days. Applicants need not have advanced to candidacy but must have at least drafted a dissertation research proposal. Applications are also welcome from doctoral students in the early phases of writing their dissertations. Students will be provided with reading assignments – a few short articles and each other’s proposals – which must be read prior to the commencement of the workshop.  Workshop participants will be selected on the basis of the submitted project, the potential for useful exchanges among them, and a concern to include a wide range of perspectives and intellectual rigor.

Each day will include a buffet lunch and a relaxed dinner to facilitate further discussion. The HEC will provide round-trip transportation to Islamabad and four nights accommodation in the HEC hostel in Islamabad for all student participants. There will be an inaugural dinner Sunday evening December 18^th. The first day of the workshop, December 19^th, will focus on discussions of seminal articles (those circulated in advance) as well as issues such as developing research questions, methodologies, bibliographies, etc. The second and third days will constitute discussions of dissertation proposals by each participant (which had previously been submitted and circulated). Participants will address both theory, methods, substance, and structure of each dissertation proposal, and tie these to the discussions held on the first day.

Applications should consist of two items only:

➩ Current curriculum vitae;

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➩ The dissertation proposal, or if the research and writing is well under way, a statement of the specific issues being addressed, the intellectual approach, and the materials being studied. Neither the proposal nor statement should exceed 10 double-spaced pages in length.

Applications submission details:

         ➩  Email (preferable) submissions with attachments to: aips@pakistanstudies-aips.org

         ➩  If a doctoral or M. Phil. student is unable to submit the application electronically, then

     the application can be mailed to: AIPS, 8 Main Ataturk Ave F-6/4, Islamabad. Such

applications must include an email address which can be used to inform the applicant of the selection committee’s decision and to circulate reading materials in advance of the dissertation workshop.

Deadline for submission of application is 30 September 2011

Applicants will be informed of the outcome of their application by 1 November 2011.

Successful applicants will receive the reading packet electronically by 15 November 2011.

For further information, please contact Nadeem Akbar at nadeem@aips.edu.pk,

or by phone at 051 2825817, 2820911.