YIF Faculty and Courses

Innovative Pedagogy

The Young India Fellowship attracts the finest academicians, practitioners and experts in the field to the classroom, and gives them the autonomy to innovate, create and craft curricula. This is a rare freedom within academia and ensures an unparalleled teaching and learning experience, not just for YIF, but across all programmes at Ashoka University.

WATCH | The YIF Podcast Season 2 | The Professor Will See You Now | Conversations with YIF Faculty

The diversity in courses is also reflected in the varied styles of teaching and assessment, which includes discussions, seminars, field visits, presentations and group work. While catering to multiple learning styles, this allows you to learn from a range of perspectives, and prepare yourself to be a critical thinker – a key 21st century skill.

Ashoka has institutionalised the Socratic way of teaching: focusing on teaching students how to think rather than just what to think. YIF, as part of the University, encourages students to ask questions rather than just passively absorbing and churning information; and generate debate and discussion around issues rather than imposing a top-down model of knowledge dissemination. At the YIF, we want to change your perspective from the standard rote learning pedagogy and introduce in the classroom an innovative and interactive pedagogy which will lead to knowledge creation and creative thinking.

Multidisciplinary Courses

The YIF offers a dynamic range of courses every year that are carefully curated and offered by renowned faculty from India and abroad. Each course offering is from a distinct academic or professional domain. Disciplines range from sciences to social sciences and from leadership to the arts. Course offerings include public policy, art appreciation, gender and media studies, leadership, group dynamics, business essentials, Shakespeare, communication, and Indian elections. Fellows study a total of 20 courses during the programme, from a pool of over 35 offerings. For the last year, courses included but were not limited to, the following:

Courses by Ashoka University Faculty

Course	Ashoka University Faculty
JM Financial Lectures on Reason and the Makers of Modern India	Rudrangshu Mukherjee Chancellor, Ashoka University; Historian; DPhil, University of Oxford
Mathematical Thinking	Maya Saran Assistant Professor of Mathematics; PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Shakespeare and the World	Jonathan Gil Harris Professor of English; PhD, University of Sussex   Madhavi Menon Professor of English; PhD, Tufts University
Understanding Pandemics	Shahid Jameel  Director, Trivedi School of Biosciences; PhD, Washington State University
Making Sense of Indian Elections	Gilles Verniers Assistant Professor of Political Science; PhD, Sciences Po
Morality and the Good Life	Clancy Martin Professor of Philosophy; PhD, University of Texas at Austin
Crowds of Occupation, Crowds of Protest	Deepak Mehta  Professor of Sociology; PhD, Delhi University
The New Geography of the Information Age	Debayan Gupta Assistant Professor of Computer Science; PhD, Yale University

Courses by Visiting Faculty at the YIF

Course	Visiting Faculty at the YIF
India and the World: A Strategic History Since 1945	Rudra Chaudhuri Senior Lecturer, Department of War Studies, King’s College London
Heart of Leadership and Group Dynamics	Kenwyn Smith Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Behavioral Science in Development	Neela Saldanha PhD, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Leadership Lessons from the Road Less Travelled	Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Padma Shree Founder, Infoedge (Naukri.com); Founder and Trustee, Ashoka University; MBA, IIM Ahmedabad
Issues in Social Democracy and Social Justice in India	Narendra Jadhav Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha)
Design Thinking and Innovation	Ranjan Banerjee Dean and Professor, BITS School of Management   Ruppal W Sharma Professor and Head, SPJIMR, New Delhi
Deconstructing Select Indian Foreign Policy Challenges and Responses: A Practitioner’s Perspective	Arun Kumar Singh Former Ambassador of India to the United States
Building Careers, Habits and Institutions	Pramath Raj Sinha Founding Dean, ISB Hyderabad; Founder and Chairman, Harappa Education; Founder and Trustee, Ashoka University
Indian Financial Regulation and Policy	KP Krishnan Former Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India
Kabir: The Poet of Vernacular Modernity	Purushottam Agrawal Renowned Kabir and Bhakti scholar
Indian Ecosophy / Global Ecosophy	Aseem Shrivastava Environmental Economist and Activist
Totalitarian Century / The Ideology Seminar	Dilip Simeon Author and Historian
Problem Solving and Statistical Thinking in Modern Life	Santosh Venkatesh Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Art Appreciation	Anunaya Chaubey Artist and Provost, Anant National University
Women, Society and Changing India	Urvashi Butalia Author, Publisher and Founder, Zubaan Books
Foundations of Leadership	Dwight Jaggard Former Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Economics and Public Policy: An Introduction to Applied Microeconomics	AK Shiva Kumar Development Economist and Visiting Professor, Harvard University and ISB Hyderabad
Philosophy and Cognitive Science	Ritwik Agrawal Doctoral Researcher, University of Missouri
India’s Economy: Past, Present and Near Future	Omkar Goswami DPhil, University of Oxford
STI as Power: The Case of China	Stephanie Balme Dean, Sciences Po
Trade, Trust and Peace in South Asia	Sanjay Kathuria DPhil, University of Oxford