Objectives and Goals

• The Centre of Advanced Studies and Research in Diaspora is part of initiating a sustained programme of academic engagement by creating fresh opportunities for students, researchers, faculty members and experts in serious involvement in contemporary interdisciplinary diaspora studies in India and elsewhere.
• The fact that diaspora studies have today acquired a multidisciplinary character and a legitimization as a scholarly, religious, political, philosophical, gendered/sexual- itself speaks for its phenomenal value as the most coveted global engagement in theory and practice for the 21st century.
• There are vexed and intricate questions for outlining the historical roots and contemporary ‘routes’ of international migration. What is important for a Centre is to place Indian diasporic communities within several historical and contemporary frames, from the older forms of movements, to examining twentieth and twenty-first century forms of international migrations, particularly after the late cold war.
• All diasporas are differentiated, contested sites of experience in terms of their ethos-cultural specificities- from Jewish, African, Palestinian, diasporas, to the European colonial expansions in the 19th century and its impact on the later waves of Indian/Punjabi(and other) waves of 20th century postcolonial migrations.
• The goal of such a research centre is to conduct research and advanced studies while contextualizing contemporary diasporic identities within the geo-political, economic and demographic shifts of the twentieth and the twenty-first century.
• Further, what has always contributed to diasporic movement, settlement and exchange is the factor of trade, commerce, agriculture, industry, raw materials, and the traffic of labour and workers to different parts across continents.
• Indian diaspora has been involved in different historical stages with plantation, economy, agriculture, and opportunities for professional advancement and economic betterment-something that still continues as a process in new forms and paradigms. This provides new research possibilities for evaluating and documenting the changing role of contemporary diasporas. The sociological and familial aspects have been no less significant in shaping the existential and cultural affiliations and identities of new generation of diasporics, affecting their familial ties and generational relationships, further in centering in the use of language, media, technology, the value system in terms of their eastern and western differences.
• One of the aims of such a centre is to closely study the factors influencing diasporic populations (including Punjabis) across nations and cultures for investigating specific reasons (sociological, cultural, biological, existential) for the gap or split in psychological or emotional responses of previous and present generations.

International Conferences

• Indian/Punjabi Diaspora: Narratives of Migration in Southeast Asia and Far East” Feb. 24 - 26, 2014.
• "Indian/Punjabi Diasporic Cinema: Narratives of Transnational Experience" March 25-27, 2015.
• "Diaspora and Development: Emerging Multidisciplinary Dynamics of Indian/Punjabi Migration" Feb. 24-26, 2016.

National Seminars

• “Komagata Maru and Punjabi Diaspora: Emerging Trends and Dimensions” Sep. 22, 2015.
• “Music, Dance and Indian/Punjabi Diaspora: Transition and Transgression” Nov. 04, 2016.

Lectures

Conference Proceedings

• Multiple Perspectives on Punjabi Diaspora: Identities, Locations and Intersections. Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, Patiala, 2014
• Critical Perspectives on Indian/Punjabi Diaspora: Narratives of Migration in Southeast Asia and Far East. Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, Patiala, 2015
• Indian/Punjabi Diasporic Cinema: Representations of Transnational Experience.
• Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, Patiala, 2016
• Diaspora and Development: Emerging Multidisciplinary Dynamics of Indian/Punjabi Migration. Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, Patiala, 2017

Seminar Proceedings

Komagata Maru and Punjabi Diaspora: Emerging Trends and Dimensions. Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, Patiala, 2017.

Lecture Series

Achievement

As per the approval of the Dean Academic Affairs on the decision of Advisory Committee of Centre for Diaspora Studies (CDS), Punjabi University, Patiala on 9th Oct., 2017, the Punjabi Bhawan, Toronto, Canada has initiated a two year project which was proposed to the Centre in June 2017 i.e. “Planning the Strategic Measures to Promote Punjabi Language at School Level Education for Punjabi Diaspora in Canada” for which it has committed to provide a financial grant of Canadian $ 20,000/- to the Centre for Diaspora Studies, Punjabi University, Patiala. They also want to sign MOU with the university.