WHAT WILL THE PRAJNYA RESOURCE CENTRE DO?

The Prajnya Resource Centre on Women in Politics and Policy seeks to fill the gap created by scattered and unsystematically compiled information in this field. There are several components to this project:

1. The creation of a statistical database which will compile salient statistics and lists of women in politics and policy-making.
2. A series of oral histories and life-stories of individual women who have played a pivotal part in politics and society.
3. A user-generated visual archive of photographs of women participating in the public sphere.

These will be supplemented over time by the collection of other archival materials. In addition, our vision for the Resource Centre includes a good library on the subject and we hope that our efforts will encourage individual women in public life and their families to regard our Centre as an appropriate repository for their papers and photographs.

Prajnya's First-ever Visiting Scholar: Saakshi Fellow Linda Racioppi Linda Racioppi is Professor of Comparative Cultures and Politics and International Relations at Michigan State University (MSU) where she also serves as Director of Strategic Partnerships in the University’s Asian Studies Center. Over the past twenty years, her research and teaching have focused on gender politics, women’s empowerment, human security, and conflict and post-conflict development in countries of Eurasia. Her excellence as a teacher has been recognized through receipt of a Lilly Teaching Fellowship, MSU Teacher-Scholar Award, and the MSU Mid-Michigan Alumni Quality in Undergraduate Teaching Award. Her main areas of responsibility as Director of Strategic Partnerships are Central and South Asia. This work has led to her serving as the gender specialist on two multinational collaborative research and outreach projects that focus on agriculture and rural development in Central Asia. Dr. Racioppi is the author of Soviet Policy in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1994), co-author of Women’s Activism in Russia (Temple University Press, 1997), and co-editor of Gender Politics of Post-Communist Eurasia (Michigan State University Press, 2009); she has also published articles and chapters on international relations and the South Asian region, gender dynamics in conflict situations, women’s activism in societies undergoing political transitions and post-conflict reconstruction, and post-conflict socioeconomic development programs and their assessment; and she has edited an occasional paper series on civil-military relations for the organization Women In International Security (WIIS). Dr. Racioppi’s current research examines gender politics and women’s inclusion in post-disaster and post-conflict situations in South and Central Asia. She will be affiliated with Prajnya for the duration of this project. Dr. Racioppi's association with Prajnya is not a new one. She was also the first speaker in our Women's History Roundtable Series in July 2008. Read more about our Atithi Programme here.