SASA Board
The SASA Board of Directors is currently made up of eleven individuals sharing a common vision for the Association and commitment to its realization. The Board will grow over time as additional individuals come forward who share the vision with enthusiasm and dedication.
The current directors are:
William Vanderbok, president
Chandrika Kaul, vice-president
Deepak Shimkhada, treasurer
Dean McHenry, secretary
Vandana Asthana
Gunjan Bagla
David Blundell
Paul Hanson
Joe Pellegrino
Ram M. Roy
Ken Silverman
William Vanderbok (PhD, Indiana University), serves as SASA president. Dr. Vanderbok has held full-time academic appointments at the University of Colorado, Indiana University, Texas Tech University and the University of California, Los Angeles. He received multiple grants from the East-West Center (Honolulu) to do research on Indian politics. He has published in Modern Asian Studies, The British Journal of Political Science, Political Methodology, Contemporary South Asia, Asian Survey, The Canadian Journal of Political Science, Social Science History, Journal of Police Science and Administration, Polity, Western Political Science Quarterly, The Journal of Asian Studies and PC Magazine. He served a term as president of Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast, is currently its treasurer, and is active in the East-West Center Association. He has organized multiple professional conferences with attendance ranging from 100-300 scholars. Retired from university life, he is now an independent scholar.
Chandrika Kaul (PhD, Oxford University), serves as SASA vice president. Dr. Kaul is a Lecturer in Modern History at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. She is the co-editor of a new book series from Palgrave Macmillan titled, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. She is the author of http://indologica.de/drupal/?q=node/638, Reporting the Raj: The British Press and India, 1880-1922, the first detailed examination of British press coverage of the sub-continent. She has also edited Media and the British Empire. In addition, she has contributed articles to a number of international academic journals, including Twentieth Century British History, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Media History and Contemporary India. Her contributions have also appeared in New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford); The Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia as well as in book chapters in Northcliff’s Legacy: Aspects of the Popular Press 1896-1996; A Journalism Reader; The "Round Table": The Empire-Commonwealth and British Foreign Policy; Contemporary History Handbook; The Communications Revolution; Gender and Media; Empire, Competition and War: Essays on the Press in the Twentieth Century, etc. She has taught for various US educational institutions’ study abroad programmes at Oxford University, including the Smithsonian Institution, Princeton, New York University, Duke/UNC, etc.
Deepak Shimkhada (PhD, Claremont Graduate University), serves as SASA treasurer. Dr. Shimkhada taught in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Claremont McKenna College from where he's retired and is now an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University. He has published three books, The Constant and Changing Faces of the Goddess: Goddess Traditions of Asia; Popular Buddhist Mantras in Sanskrit; and Himalayas at the Crossroads: Portraits of a Changing World. Two other books nearing publication are Nepal: Nostalgia and Modernity; Memories of a Painful Past: Chinese Posters of the Cultural Revolution. He has contributed chapters to The Constant and Changing Faces of the Goddess; Bhagavata Purana: A Reader; Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia: Diseases, Possession and Healing; and Sangama: A Confluence of Art and Culture During the Vijayanagara Period. Articles have appeared in NAFA Art Magazine, Arts of Asia, Orientations, Artibus Asiae, Oriental Art, Journal of Asian Studies, Himalayan Research Bulletin, Voice of Ulan Bator, Himalaya, Folk Dance Scene, The Overseas Times, India West, and The Rising Nepal. He is the president of Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast; founder and president of the Foundation for Indic Philosophy and Culture; founder and president of the Himalayan Arts Council at the Pacific Asia Museum; and editor of two newsletters: Himalaya and Indicator.
Dean McHenry (PhD, Indiana University), serves as SASA secretary. Dr. McHenry is currently a professor of politics and policy at the Claremont Graduate University. He has also taught at the University of Calabar (Nigeria), Brown University, University of Illinois, and the University of Dar es Salam (Tanzania). He served as Dean of the School of Politics and Economics at CGU. In addition to field research in Africa, he has conducted extensive work in India (Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal). He is the author to two books on African politics, Limited Choices: The Political Struggle for Socialism in Tanzania, and Tanzania’s Ujamaa Villages: the Implementation of a Rural Development Strategy. He has contributed chapters to a number of books on African politics, one on India, and published nearly two dozen professional papers. He was a Fulbright Senior Specialist had received research awards/fellowships from the Haynes Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Fulbright-Hayes, N.D.F.L., Fletcher Jones, and Midwest Consortium for International Development.
Vandana Asthana (PhD Political Science, CSJM University India, PhD Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) was the Head of the Department of Political Science at Christ Church College, C.S.J.M University in Kanpur, India and currently teaches political science in the Government department at Eastern Washington University. Her publications include several books: Water Policy Processes in India: Discourses of Power and ResistanceThe Politics of Environment, India's Foreign Policy and Subcontinental Politics, Theory of International Politics and two edited volumes, Security in South Asia: Trends and Directions and Advances in Environmental Biopollution. She has published a large number of research articles in various journals and has contributed chapters in edited volumes. She has been on delegations of Track Two Diplomacy for confidence building measures between India and Pakistan. Dr. Asthana has been associated with premier think tanks in the region and has participated in the Ford Foundation projects in India and Sri Lanka on Comprehensive and Environmental Security in South Asia. She is the Founder member of the IC Centre for Governance, New Delhi, and the Founder Secretary and Member Advisory Panel of Eco-Friends, an NGO that works on water issues in India. She has served as consultant and completed a project for the Government of India on the Water Security of India. Her forthcoming books include Nuke Waters: Water Security in India and Pakistan.
Gunjan Bagla (MBA , Southern Illinois; BSME, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur) is Managing Director of Amritt, Inc., a management consultancy that helps Western executives at top companies to do business in India. He also created the executive workshop Doing Business in India for Caltech’s executive education program and taught it several times a year until 2009. Bagla is the author of Doing Business in 21st Century India (Hachette 2008) and blogs at www.theindiaexpert.com. His web-based "Dictionary of Indian English" is a popular location to find both current and classic words used by Indians as part of an English conversation. Bagla writes about India for Business Week and other publications. He is a frequent public speaker on India and business. He is currently the President of the Alumni Association of the IITs and a Charter Member of TiE, The Indus Entrepreneur. He lives in Cerritos, California with his wife Smita, and two school-age children.
David Blundell (PhD Anthropology, University of California) is based at National Chengchi University in Taipei, and has contributed a number of works on South Asia including Masks: Anthropology on the Sinhalese Belief System (NY: Peter Lang) and the making of a feature documentary film Dr B. R. Ambedkar and the Birth of a New Era in India (Navaloka Productions). He is an international consultant for the Institute for the Development of Community Strength (INDECOS), an NGO in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka for assisting rural arts and cultural development and programs. His current research collaboration is with the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative for language and culture mapping. Professor Blundell offers courses such as South Asia as a Cultural Area; Buddhism as Myth, Liberator, and Power in Southern Asia; and Introduction to Development Studies: Economic Development and Culture Change - at universities in Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka, and the United States.
Paul Hanson (PhD, University of Chicago) is chair of the history department at California Lutheran University. He previously taught at St. Olaf College and Agra University (India). Twice a Fulbright Scholar in India, Dr. Hanson's research has focused on Islamic history in South Asia, especially the relationship of religion and political legitimacy. Other national fellowships and awards have enabled him to study in London, Sri Lanka and Jordan. He is the winner of the President's Award for Teaching Excellence
Joe Pellegrino (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) serves as the technology coordinator on the SASA board. Dr. Pellegrino teaches postcolonial literature and Irish Studies at Georgia Southern University. He has also taught at Eastern Kentucky University and University of South Carolina Upstate. His most recent publication, in the South Asian Review, is on Edward Elgar's Crown of India Masque. He has coordinated the annual British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference for several years, and is the web administrator for The Journal of British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies.
Ram M. Roy (PhD, Claremont Graduate University) is professor emeritus of political science at California State University, Northridge. Dr. Roy's areas of interest include: U.S. Foreign Policy; Comparative Foreign Policies; India U.S. and Asia relations. Dr. Roy's publications include: Indian Democracy in Crisis; India and The World in the Post Cold War Era. He has also written papers such as: "Non-alignment: the Cultural Background" and "The Sino-Soviet Disputes in Southeast Asia." He is a TV Commentator, and a Public Speaker.
Ken Silverman is the president of Interactive Teamworks, a privately held consulting and creative services organization. Mr. Silverman is a nationally prominent media strategist and entrepreneur with more than 35 years of experience in the front ranks of the U.S. entertainment and communications fields. He has participated in the acquisition, production, distribution, and marketing of content for motion picture theaters, commercial and public broadcasting, cable and pay-television, home video, satellites, interactive media, and the Internet. Since 1997, Mr. Silverman has specialized in electronic media related to the Indian subcontinent. He is a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), former Executive Vice President of Indians in American Media [IAM], and writes often for The India Journal. He is Executive Producer of two forthcoming US motion pictures targeted to be shot in India, and sponsored The 2006 Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. A critical member of the SASA board, he brings needed management and marketing expertise.