On July 1, Nikhil Anand, an associate professor of anthropology in the School of Arts & Sciences, became the first associate faculty director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI).

Dr. Anand will serve a range of roles that will help broaden the center’s intellectual mission and reinforce its role in the wider University. These activities include expanding CASI’s research into new areas; mentoring students participating in CASI student programs; hosting scholars, policymakers, and practitioners on campus; and organizing events and activities in India.

Dr. Anand’s research focuses on cities, infrastructure, state power, and climate change. He addresses these topics by studying the political ecology of cities, read through the different lives of water. Dr. Anand is the author of numerous books, including the award-winning Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Politics in Mumbai, which examines the everyday ways in which cities and citizens are made through the everyday management of water infrastructure. His new book project, Urban Seas, decenters the grounds of urban planning by drawing attention to the ways in which climate-changed seas are remaking coastal cities today.

Since its founding in 1992 as the first academic research center in the U.S. for the study of contemporary India, CASI has continued to uphold Penn’s global reputation as a leading U.S. institution of research in South Asian studies and scholarship on India. Recognized as a national resource, CASI fulfills Penn’s mission of providing students a durable foundation for critical and creative thinking by engaging in policy-relevant research focused on the challenges facing contemporary India.