Revisiting the Rudolphs' Intellectual Legacy: Reflections on Society, State and Democracy in Contemporary India

UChicago Center in Delhi, Ground Floor, DLF Capitol Point, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi 11001

Program Advisor:

Asha Sarangi (UChicago PhD)

Professor in the Centre for Political Studies

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph are among the most influential scholars of modern South Asian studies. Over more than five decades of collaborative work, they produced a body of scholarship that fundamentally transformed how the world understands Indian politics, society, and the state. 

This one-day workshop brings together a distinguished group of scholars who have engaged deeply with the Rudolphs’ work, as students, interlocutors, and inheritors of their intellectual tradition, to reflect on, debate, and extend their legacy. The conference unfolds across five thematic panels that map the breadth of the Rudolphs’ contributions and closes with concluding remarks by distinguished professors whose scholarly lives have been shaped, in no small measure, by the questions the Rudolphs spent a lifetime asking. At its heart, the conference is an act of intellectual remembrance, looking forward as much as it looks back, animated by the conviction that the finest tribute one can pay to a scholar is to keep wrestling with the problems they devoted their life to.

Join us at the UChicago Center in Delhi as we come together to celebrate and revisit the lasting intellectual legacy of Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph, former faculty in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. With UChicago alumnus Asha Sarangi as the program advisor, this workshop will feature speakers and their research which has been influenced by the works of the Rudolphs.

Register for the event here.

Event Details:
Date: Tuesday, 28 April, 2026
Time: 10:30 AM to 4:30 PM

Venue: UChicago Center in Delhi, Ground Floor, DLF Capitol Point, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi 110001

Please write to jubakshi@uchicago.edu for any queries.