CSASA-ACESA, the Canadian South Asian Studies Association/Association canadienne d’études sud-asiatiques (CSASA-ACESA) is a scholarly association affiliated with the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. CSASA-ACESA, founded in 2019, draws on a long history of scholarship on South Asian Studies in Canada, and is intended to further the academic study of South Asia-Canada and to enhance national awareness of South Asia-related events and resources at Canadian universities and colleges. CSASA-ACESA is proud to host its fourth Annual Meeting in-person at the Federation’s Annual Congress, Canada’s largest academic gathering (June 3rd-6th, 2025) George Brown College, Toronto.
Send us an email at csasa.acesa@gmail.com to learn more about the association, attending our annual meeting, or becoming involved with the association.
Members of the organizing committee:
Julie Vig, Assistant Professor, York University
Julie Vig is Assistant Professor of Humanities, Religious Studies, and South Asian Cultures at York University. Her research focuses on premodern Sikh and Punjabi cultural production and how it relates to wider cultural worlds and networks of premodern North India (c.1500-1850). Her particular focus is on gurbilās literature and its interactions with broader Brajbhasha literature in the early modern period. She also has secondary research interests in the reception of early modern Sikh texts in the colonial period and women, gender, and sexuality within the Sikh tradition.
julievig@yorku.ca
Andrea Farran, Associate Professor, McGill University
Andrea Farran is Associate Professor in South Asian Religions at McGill University in the Faculty of Arts. She first studied South Asian civilization as an undergraduate at McGill in the Faculty of Religious Studies (B.A.); then in India (Banaras Hindu University, Adv. Diploma in Hindi) and the United States (M.A., University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Ph.D., Columbia University). She has taught in India (Antioch College and S.I.T.), and Singapore (National University of Singapore); her research languages are Hindi-Urdu and Sanskrit. She serves as Vice-President of CSASA-ACESA, the Canadian South Asian Studies Association / Association canadienne d’études sud-asiatiques.
andrea.farran@mcgill.ca
Arafaat Valiani, Associate Professor, University of Oregon
Dr. Arafaat Valiani, PhD is the 2023 Killam Laureate and Visiting Scholar in Community Health Sciences in Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. He is Associate Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Oregon. Dr. Valiani studied postcolonial and social theory as an undergraduate at Concordia University in Montreal, African history and thought in the United Kingdom (MA School of Oriental and African Studies), and then focused on medical ethnography and modern South Asian history in the United States (MPhil./PhD Columbia University) at the doctoral level. His research and teaching combine transdisciplinary insights from the history of science and postcolonial science studies in order to contribute to the study of genetics and science in modern South Asia, as well as biomedical ethics pertaining to the prospect of introducing precision medicine to address health inequities experienced by racialized communities in North America. His research languages are Kutchi, Urdu, Gujarati and Hindi. He serves as a member of the Executive Committee of CSASA-ACESA, the Canadian South Asian Studies Association / Association canadienne d’études sud-asiatiques.
arafaat.valiani@ucalgary.ca
www.arafaat.com
Sloane Geddes, Doctoral Candidate, University of Toronto
Sloane Geddes is a scholar of South Asian religions and is a doctoral candidate at the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation research centres on the cultural production of Kashmir and the use of Buddhist narrative in the 9th century CE. As a scholar of Sanskrit, her research interests centre around the religious history of Kashmir, Sanskrit literature, and reception history. However, she is more broadly interested in practices of reading, gender and sexuality, and manuscript studies. For 2024-2025 she is a Doctoral Fellow for Hidden Stories, University of Toronto.
kathryn.geddes@mail.utoronto.ca
