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Nadila Ali

Nadila Ali is a DPhil candidate in International Relations at the University of Oxford. Her current research explores the use of local peace agreements and ‘people-to-people’ reconciliation in the context of international peacebuilding interventions. Her broader research interests include identity-based conflict, armed group dynamics, peace processes, third-party mediation, and conflict resolution/transformation. Nadila is also a member of the Oxford Network of Peace Studies (OxPeace).

Tierney Hall

Tierney Hall is reading for an MPhil in International Relations. Her research focuses on the politics of state cooperation and competition in international health institutions. Her academic interests include international health institutions; global health diplomacy; refugee resettlement policy; and refugee health.

“His Soul was a Bird of the Divine Throne”: Persian Inscriptions on Mughal Imperial Tombs and Mosques

The Mughals are known for building the largest and most magnificent imperial mausoleums of any Muslim dynasty in or outside of South Asia. However, these monuments differ from one another as much as they do from the imperial tombs of their contemporaries, whether the Safavids in Iran or the Ottomans further west. Art historians have long puzzled over the inventive forms of the Mughal mausoleums. I revisit these debates by considering the presence and absence of Persian panegyric inscriptions on these buildings.

Dharma, Artha, and the Politics of Law and Sovereignty in Colonial India

Dr. Sunil Purushotham, Associate Professor of History at Fairfield University, is an historian of modern South Asia whose research focuses on the history of sovereignty and democracy in India, Indian political thought, and global intellectual history. His book, From Raj to Republic: Sovereignty, Violence and Democracy in India, was published by Stanford University Press in 2021.

Seduced by God or Man? Religious Conversions and Women’s Desire in Pakistan

For the past decade, the press in Pakistan has remained rife with stories of the kidnapping, forcible conversion to Islam, and marriages of young Hindu women at the hands of Muslim men. Women’s rights and minority advocacy groups have demanded a state-led response, but two attempts at legislation have already failed. In courts, legal redress requires a clear, visible difference between forcible abduction and what is termed “free-will” elopement. However, these matters are complicated further when the very nature of Hindu women’s desire appears indeterminate.

Along The Path To Gandhi's Neighbor

The figures of the neighbor and friend are ubiquitous in Gandhi’s writings. While he himself assumes he is only reaffirming old figures, something truly radical happens in his writings (as in those of his sharpest critic, Ambedkar). Both write at a time when a modern commandment, so to speak, exemplified in the categorical imperative, is displacing the Biblical and other analogous commandments. It is in order to criticize this new commandment that both affirm instead old commandments around neighbor and friend.

A New Vision of Vivekananda?

In this paper, I will explore why Vivekananda’s words challenged and enticed so many audiences around the world. Why did publics as diverse as respectable New Englanders and Swadeshi “terrorist” honour him so fervently? I want to suggest that the title of my recent book “Guru to the World” was not designed to reinforce the tired story of Vivekananda as the first global guru who unlocked eastern spirituality for the materialism west.
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