Ajailiu (“Ajai”) Niumai
Ajai is the very first CARTHA Fellow, and in this capacity, visited the United States in October 2006. She spent a week in Iowa City with CARTHA’s founder Usha Balakrishnan and collaborators based in Iowa City. She also made a presentation at the South Asia Studies conference in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2012, Ajai was again in Iowa City at the invitation of the University of Iowa to speak at an Indian diaspora philanthropy workshop co-sponsored by CARTHA. Ajai’s third trip to Iowa City in 2013 was enabled when Ajai received the prestigious Raman Fellowship awarded by the University Grants Commission of the Government of India to spend a year doing research in Iowa.
Ajailiu Niumai is an Associate Professor in the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy (CSSEIP) at the University of Hyderabad (UoH), Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India. She is also a Joint faculty at the Centre for Women’s Studies, UoH. Her area of research interest includes Gender (Trafficking of Women); NGOs and Development; Indian Diaspora Philanthropy; and North East Studies. Previously, Ajai had worked as a researcher in TV Today Network (India Today Group, New Delhi) and had worked as Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, UoH. She graduated in Sociology (Honours) from Miranda House, Delhi University and completed her M.A., M.Phil and Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She serves as a National Resource Person for the University Grants Commission (UGC) for Capacity Building of Women Managers in Higher Education. She has taught post-graduate courses in the Department of Sociology on Social Stratification, Indian Society and Introduction to Society. She also taught a course on Feminist Research Methodology and Women’s Movement, Social Processes and Social Exclusion to M.Phil students. Her elective course offerings on Sociology of Non-Governmental Organizations and Development have attracted students from the USA (New York, Wisconsin, Ohio), Paris, Ulan Bator (Mongolia), Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Some of Ajai’s students are now faculty at other Indian universities or program officers and researchers in non-profit organizations such as CARE-India and Dhan Foundation. She has published articles in International Journal of Anthropology “Man in India”, Indian Journal of Human Rights and the Himalayan Journal of Development and Democracy. She has also done book reviews for the Sociological Bulletin, South Asian Journal of Management and Journal of Educational Planning and Administration. Her articles entitled Marginalisation of Naga Women in North East India, will appear in Rekha Pande (eds) Gender Lens, Women’s Issues and Perspectives in Contemporary Societies, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ‘Development and Discontentment in the North East: Perspective on India’s Look East Policy,’ is published in Thingnam Kishan Singh (eds), Look East Policy and India’s North East: Polemics and Perspectives, New Delhi, Concept, 2009, and her paper on ‘Religion of the Liangmai Nagas in North East India’ is published in D. Murali Manohar (eds), Dalits and Religion, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors (P) Ltd, 2009, Delhi. She has made presentations in the University of Iowa, USA, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA and University of Surrey, U.K. Ajai has led projects funded by Partnership-In-Mission (NGO) and UoH, and has organized national workshops at the UoH.