Dr. V.J. Varghese, teaching at the Department of History, University of Hyderabad (UoH) has recently joined the Central European University (CEU) at Budapest in Hungary as a Visiting Fellow under its Research Excellence Fellowship Program. The tenure of the fellowship is for two consecutive terms (the winter and spring), during which he will be associated primarily with the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology. This fellowship program is supported by the Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Foundation and are given to academics employed in higher education for their excellent contributions in their respective field of research. The fellowship is given for conducting original research that will lead to groundbreaking publications.
Dr. Varghese would be working on the historical making of regional economic modernities in the erstwhile colonies of the global South and their seemingly conflicting orientations. The fellowship would also give him a chance for professional development, academic exchanges with the faculties at CEU and possibilities of research collaboration.
Dr. Varghese has done his Doctoral Research from UoH and has joined the Department of History in 2014. He was Assistant Professor at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram and the Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, prior to this. His areas of interest include modern South Asian history, transnational migrations from South Asia and making of regional modernities in South Asia, with a focus on Kerala in South India and Punjab in North India. He has co-authored Dreaming Mobility and Buying Vulnerability: Overseas Recruitment Practices in India (Routledge) and co-edited Anjuru Varshathe Keralam: Chila Arivadayalangal in Malayalam (Tapasam/DC Books), Migration, Mobility and Multiple Affiliations: Punjabis in a Transnational World (Cambridge University Press) apart from writing in reputed journals and contributing chapters to many edited volumes. He held visiting fellowships at the University of Sussex (2010-11) and the National University of Singapore (2014), prior to the present one at CEU Budapest.