Welcome to our new Resident Librarian for South and Southeast Asian Studies!

The International and Area Studies (IAS) Department is thrilled to formally introduce Adhitya Dhanapal, the new Resident Librarian for South and Southeast Asian Studies at Duke University Libraries. Adhitya is only the third South Asian studies librarian at Duke University, which recently celebrated its 60^th anniversary of collaborative collection development via the South Asia Cooperative Acquisitions Program (SACAP).

Adhitya Dhanapal, who is nearing the completion of a PhD thesis on the transnational history of the South Asian handloom weaving industry, is an enthusiast of textiles in both his academic and private life. Prior to commencing the Ph.D. program at Princeton University, Adhitya completed an M.A. in Arts and Aesthetics, followed by an M.Phil. in History, both degrees from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.

Most recently, Adhitya served as a library fellow at Princeton University, working under the tutelage of Dr. Ellen Ambrosone, the Librarian for South Asian Studies. As the Graduate Student Assistant of the South Asian Ephemera Collection, he made initial selections and created related metadata for contemporary ephemera in English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, and Tamil. Having spent copious hours in numerous libraries, Adhitya “became curious to better understand the history of collecting practices and the creation of archives and other repositories.” Fortunately, Duke has a rich collection of South Asian materials for both Adhitya’s curiosities as well as the growing number of faculty and students interested in this large and diverse part of the world.

Adhitya officially started on the 1^st of December and is settling-in nicely to his new digs. His office is located in the revamped and now, for the first time in four years, fully-staffed IAS suite, on the second floor of Bostock Library, on the West Campus of Duke. Please come on by and say hello!

Welcome, Adhitya, we’re fortunate and happy to have you!