The Immersion Course Faculty

The immersion course involves an orientation in the social sciences in general with each module taught by an active practitioner or academic at the forefront of knowledge and research in her/his field.

The faculty for the current session (summer 2008) is as follows:

Ajaya Mani Dixit is a Water Resource Engineer. A former Member of HMG's Water and Energy Commission, he is currently serving as the chairman of NEWAH, a national-level technical NGO that aims at empowering communities to build and manage their own drinking water projects. He was a faculty member of the Department of Civil Engineering at the Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Pulchowk from 1979 to 1989. He has provided extensive research and consultancy services in the fields of drinking water supply, irrigation and hydropower development to institutions such as the Ford Foundation, IDRC, various agencies under the United Nations, the Asian Development Bank as well as numerous other bilateral donors. A founding member of Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, he edits Water Nepal, a biannual journal that focuses on various facets of water resource development.

Bandita Sijapati is a PhD candidate at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Her research involves migration, transnationalism, citizenship, and civil conflicts. She has a master's degree from Columbia University, New York, and a bachelor's from Macalester College, Minnesota. She is the co-author of A Kingdom Under Siege: Nepal’s Maoist Insurgency, 1996-2004 (Kathmandu and London, 2004) and co-editor of Women Making Peace: Strengthening Women's Role in Peace Process (Kathmandu, 2002) and also wrote a section for Social and Economic Conditions of East Timor (International Conflict Resolution Program, New York, 1999).

Dipak Gyawali, a former Minister for Water Resources, is a Hydroelectric Power Engineer and Resource Economist by profession. He is also a Pragya (member) of the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, International Advisory Board of Battelle Pacific Northwest National Lab (USA), New York Academy of Sciences, International Research Committee of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies in Colombo, as well as past chairman of Duryog Nivaran, a South Asian initiative promoting an alternative perspective on disaster mitigation particularly in flood, drought and conflict related stresses. He served with the Ministry of Water Resources from 1979 from 1987, and as a Board Director of Nepal Electricity Authority from 1992 from 1993. He has recently completed a five-year term as chairman of the board of trustees of Swabalamban, a grassroots voluntary NGO dedicated to poverty alleviation in rural . He was a visiting scholar at the International Environment Academy at GenevaOxford.

Hari Sharma is currently Director of Social Science Baha. He is also Senior Advisor to the Nepal Trade Union Congress. He has served in the government and academia in various capacities. He studied in India, the USA and Nepal. He is the co-author of Political Leadership in NepalLocal Leadership in Nepal. He has also contributed chapters to various books.

Pralad Yonzon, Fulbright Scholar and the Golden Ark recipient, received his PhD in wildlife resources and conservation. Besides working as a visiting professor at Tribhuvan University and serving as chair of Resources Himalaya Foundation, he collaborates with his colleagues in conservation works in South and Southeast Asia.

Pratyoush Onta holds a PhD in history, and has written on Nepali nationalism, Gurkha history, institutions, area studies and media. He has written, edited or co-edited several books including Nepal Studies in the UK (2004), Growing up with Radio (2005, in Nepali), Mass Media in Post-1990 Nepal (2006) and Socially Inclusive Media (2008, in Nepali). He is also the founding editor of the journals Studies in Nepali History and Society, and Media Adhyayan.  He is presently the convenor of Martin Chautari, a forum for discussions and research located in Kathmandu. as well as the Queen Elizabeth House at and

Rhoderick Chalmers read South Asian studies at Cambridge University and completed his PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2003. His thesis, ‘“We Nepalis”: The formation of a Nepali public sphere in  1914-1940’, examined the emergence of modern Nepali public culture. His research interests include language and identity politics, although he has spent the last four years working on conflict-related issues in Nepal, India and Bangladesh.

Sagar Prasai is a development planner and has been associated with development as an academic as well as a practitioner.  He has a doctoral degree in regional planning from the University of Illinois and a masters in urban and regional planning from the University of Hawaii.  He has been a consultant to various national and international development agencies including the National Planning Commission, UNDP, DfID and the World Bank. He is currently with The Asia Foundation.

Sanjeev Uprety is Lecturer with the Mphil in English Programme and the Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu. He received his PhD from Brown University for the dissertation titled ‘Double Mimesis: Representations of Mimicry, Masculinity, Modernity and Nation in colonial and post-colonial narratives 1850-1947’. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines and is the author of the recently published novel, Ghanachakkar.

Saurav Dev Bhatta is a faculty member at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has also taught at the Institute of Engineering, Pulchowk, and at Kathmandu University as a visiting faculty. He teaches courses on economic development, environmental economics, research methods and poverty. Within the context of his research he has focused on poverty, social protection, education and environmental economics. He holds a masters degree in electrical engineering from MIT and a PhD in planning from Cornell University.

Sudhindra Sharma is Director at Interdisciplinary Analysts, a research organisation based in Kathmandu. A sociologist by training he completed his master’s degree in sociology from Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines in 1992 and his PhD from the University of Tampere in Finland in 2001. He has been a visiting researcher at the Institute of Development Studies (Helsinki). Under the Asian Scholarship Programme, he was a Visiting Scholar at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (Delhi) and the Institute of Asian Studies (Bangkok), where he researched on the ‘Relationship between Monarchy and Religion in Hindu and Buddhist Countries’. He is the author of the book Procuring Water: Foreign Aid and Rural Water Supply in (2001) and a co-editor of the book Aid Under Stress: Water, Forests and Finnish Support in (2004). He has contributed articles on aid relationships and impacts in developing countries in books published by Palgrave Macmillan. He has made several contributions to the policy papers brought out by the Institute of Development Studies, University of Helsinki which has covered issues related to democratization, conflict and globalization in developing countries. Besides foreign aid, he has also examined Hinduism and Islam and has to his credit several research articles in journals and books. Sharma is also interested in quantitative social science research techniques and has co-authored with Pawan Kumar Sen several nationwide political opinion poll reports. For the past 10 years he has been associated with the Immersion Course on Contemporary Social Issues.

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