RESEARCH
SPECIALIZATIONS

At Vidyashilp University, there are three schools that have been established with an interdisciplinary framework. Explore the areas of research under each of these schools, supervised by our faculty community of Leaders and Luminaries.

SCHOOL OF COMPUTATIONAL AND DATA SCIENCES

SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS AND DESIGN STUDIES

SCHOOL OF COMPUTATIONAL
AND DATA SCIENCES

Explainable and Interpretable AI

Auto Neural Network Architecture

Context Extraction for Hierarchical Organization of Videos in the Educational Domain

Semantic Textual Similarity

Visible Light Drive Efficient Catalytic Dye Degradation

Hydrogen Evolution by Water Splitting

Toxic / Irritant Gas Sensors

Fractional Calculus

Wavelets

Combining Data From Different Sources and Making Robust Inferences

Typically, an organization makes strategic decisions based on various information/ data that exist internally as well as data obtained from other external resources. The Big Data tools/ platforms such as Hadoop, Storm, HPCC Systems etc., help in putting these data together in a form that can be used for analysis. For example, information related to the performance of a product may be pulled from various sources such as proprietary and syndicated surveys (structured data), report/ reviews, field incidence data (repair data), and through unstructured sources such as web blogs, social media etc. In order to get a holistic understanding of the product’s field performance, we need to use the data from different sources differently. The existing data science methods cannot as yet handle combining multiple, heterogeneous sources of data to build a single, accurate model (see “Ten Research Challenge areas in Data Science” by Wing J M published in Harvard Data Science Review, Sep 30, 2020). Bounding the uncertainty of a data model is exacerbated when built from multiple, possibly unrelated data sources. More pragmatically, standardization of data types and data formats could reduce undesired or unnecessary heterogeneity. In this work, we plan to develop Data Science methodologies including data cleansing, standardizing and estimating the desired parameters based on the combined data by minimizing bias induced by the external and internal sources so that organizations can draw robust inferences and take appropriate decisions.

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Prof. R. P. Suresh

Prof. R.P. Suresh is an award-winning Data Scientist and highly distinguished expert with over three decades of experience in the industry and academia. He is currently the Principal Director in Supply Chain Analytics at Accenture Applied Intelligence. He is also a consultant with numerous organisations like the Department of Telecommunications (Govt. of India), WIPRO, Kirloskar Cummins, TATA Tea, Hindustan Newspapers and IES Officers Training, among many others.

Prof. Suresh holds a Ph.D. in Statistics and was bestowed the ‘Young Statistician Award’ by the Indian Society of Probability and Statistics. During his academic and professional journey, he wore many hats. He was a faculty at IIM Kozhikode for over a decade and also a researcher at General Motors R&D Centre, India. He has been a visiting faculty and guest lecturer at institutes including Victoria University of Wellington, Indian Institute of Science, and Indian Statistical Institute.

Prof. Suresh is a two-time gold medallist and has received awards including GM India President’s honour. He has refereed over 27 professional journals and contributed to several conferences and trade inventions.

Prerequisites

Essential: Master’s degree in Statistics/ Computer Science

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Predicting Failures Beyond Warranty

In the automotive and high-tech industries, it is of interest to predict failures of products and components to help engineers, financial managers and supply chain managers to take appropriate warranty decisions (e.g., extension of warranty), determine warranty reserve fund and stock levels of spare parts, provide alerts to customers, and arrive at bulk replacement or recall decisions. For most components, the manufacturers have the failures data only until the warranty period, and the data that exist beyond warranty period are not very reliable or largely incomplete. Hence the prediction of failures beyond warranty period needs to be based primarily on failure data during warranty period. Some parametric based prediction models (see, e.g., “Weibull Prediction Intervals for a Future Number of Failures by Nordman and Meeker, Technometrics, 2002, Vol 44, p 15-23), Ebrahami E (Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 2009) exist in the literature by estimating the parameters based on the data till the warranty period. However, since typically, only 3-4% of items / parts fail in the warranty period, such parameter estimates may not be reliable.

In this research, it is proposed to develop new methodologies to estimate the failures beyond the warranty by considering a number of variables as well as more sophisticated Machine Learning Methodologies.

Methods: Literature Survey, Data Collection, Data Analysis and Statistics, Simulation and Computation

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Prof. R. P. Suresh

Prerequisites

Essential: Master’s degree in Statistics/ Computer Science

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Research Portfolio: Chaos and Synchronization of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS
AND DESIGN STUDIES

International Economics

Gender Economics: Assessment of Gender Sensitive Infrastructure

The finance minister in her recent budget announced that there would be very large outlays towards infrastructure during the Amrit Kaal. It would be very meaningful to conduct a gender analytics to assess if these projects are going to be beneficial to women.

Cross Country assessment of economic opportunities for women in developing countries-It is now well documented that gender disparities have led to slower economic growth and development. The gender gap in terms of labor force participation, in terms of leadership in the corporate or political arena, in terms of wages, in terms of opportunities etc is quite stark in developing countries. Also, developing countries especially those in Asia, share several economic and cultural similarities. A comparative look into the gendered laws for women’s empowerment, gender budgeting, other efforts to help women scale up and their impact will help understand the specific efforts towards bridging this gap and possibly make policy suggestions to emulate these practices, if the same are worth the while.

Other topics under this area could include- assessment of profitability with gender diversity; Feminist Economics-a theoretical study to understand various schools of thought; Education and gender aspects, unpaid care work and its implications on the economy etc.

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Prof. Radhika Lobo

Prof. Radhika Lobo is an award-winning researcher and academician with over 3 decades of experience. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.Phil in Economics and has held leadership positions in academic administration. Prof. Lobo was deputed as an Exchange Faculty at the University of West Georgia and Clayton Business School, in the US. She has also been Visiting Faculty at several B-Schools including, NMIMS, Mumbai; Asia Graduate School of Business, Hyderabad and BIMTECH, Noida.

As a guest speaker at National and International Universities, she has spoken on topics related to the Indian Economy, International Economics and the Financial Crisis.

Prof. Lobo has published a book titled Southeast Asian Crisis: An Economic Analysis, and several research papers across reputed journals.

Pre-requisites

Some basic knowledge of research methodology will help. Rigorous and extensive review of literature will help in identifying the research problem and objectives. It will also help identify the research gap. Making a rough draft of the research proposal will help both the candidate and the supervisor to arrive at the exact topic.

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Indian Economy: Assessment of Foreign Market Entry Options for Small Businesses in Rural India

The Relation Between Perceptual Grouping and Visual Attention

Perceptual Grouping and Counting

Perceptual and Visual Working Memory

Sociology / Anthropology of Marriage and Kinship

Migration and South Asian Diasporas

Phenomenology of Religion

Urban Studies

English Literature, with a focus on Interdisciplinary Studies

Ethnic American women’s fiction: Cultural studies about the United States have always focused on covert racial overtones that “non-white” ethnic sections have historically faced and still face while adjusting to a new life in the U.S. Thanks to social media, those of us who are not living in mainland U.S.A. are quite knowledgeable about incidents that take place on a daily basis that can be categorized as “race” or “hate” crimes. Such incidents are also captured in the domain of literature. After the overhaul of the immigration system in 1965, the influx of diverse ethnic and national groups in the U.S. has given rise to a section of authors who do not identify as mainstream and generally do not wish to be categorized as “canonical”. This research project focuses on the work of such contemporary women authors (1980-present) who are pushing back against the staunch system of canons in the United States and carving a niche for themselves. The driving questions of this research project are broadly: (i) what are the main themes of the works of such authors? (ii) are there any similarities (stylistic and thematic) between the works of these women authors? (iii) do these women identify as “American” or “hyphenated Americans”, and what does this sort of identification do for their works? (iv) how do their works portray the American society? Is there a sense of alienation?

Transnationalism: Generally, transnationalism refers to a social phenomenon where migrants are operational in social fields that cross geographic and cultural borders. This process takes into account the receding rigidity of geographic borders and dismantles the concept of nation states. Transnationalism has also gained importance in the field of Literature. It is hard to come up with a definition for Transnational Literature, but it can be broadly said that this is a particular type of literature which focuses on a set of themes associated with decolonization, hybridity, globalization, postmodernity, cosmopolitanism, diaspora, History, identity, migration, and technology (this is not an exhaustive list by any means). Renowned authors like Jhumpa Lahiri, Derek Walcott, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Wole Soyinka and many more focus on issues and themes that are associated with the Transnational sphere. This research project focuses on such Transnational writing with the broad aim of investigating ways in which Transnational authors engage with the sense of “belonging” and the pivotal question of “where is home?”

Trauma and Memory Studies: According to Michelle Balaev, “psychological trauma, its representation in language, and the role of memory in shaping individual and cultural identities are the central concerns that define the field of trauma studies.” Trauma, both individual and collective, has far-reaching effects in the field of literature. This research project looks closely at the representation of mass trauma arising from major wars, such as WW I and II, the Balkan War, the Afghan War, and others, not excluding the many civil wars that the world has seen over the past century or so. The main thrust of this research project is an investigation of the ways this specific set of mass trauma is represented in literary works and the different ways narrative techniques are used to invoke these deep-set emotions. The project is premised on the overlap between trauma and memory and the myriad ways in which the cyclical recall of traumatic memory is the driving force of a narrative. The main research questions of this project are (i) in what ways does the representation of trauma by different authors differ? (ii) apart from the overarching theme of trauma, are there any stylistic or thematic similarities between these works, (iii) what sort of narrative techniques are used to represent these complex set of emotions, and finally, (iv) what are the interconnected ways through which representation of this specific type of mass trauma leads to remediation.

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Tania Islam

tania.i@vidyashilp.edu.in

Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Arts and Design Studies

Dr. Tania Islam is an Assistant Professor in the School of Liberal Arts and Design Studies at Vidyashilp University. She received her Ph.D. in English from Temple University (Philadelphia, U.S.A.) in 2022. Even though she earned her Doctorate in the field of English Literature, her research interests have always been diverse and interdisciplinary in nature. Her doctoral thesis titled “Things Left Unsaid: Historical Silences and Multiethnic Women’s Fiction” looked at the interconnections between immigrant trauma and narratology. While at Temple University, Dr. Islam taught diverse courses on academic writing, popular and contemporary fiction, food culture, and the detective novel. She received the highly-competitive Center for the Humanities (at Temple University) Advanced Scholar fellowship for the 2021-22 academic year for her doctoral research project. At Vidyashilp, Dr. Islam plans to expand upon her doctoral thesis and do more research on the interconnections between oral storytelling and memory.

Dr. Islam taught diverse courses on academic writing, popular and contemporary fiction, food culture, and the detective novel. She received the highly-competitive Center for the Humanities (at Temple University) Advanced Scholar fellowship for the 2021-22 academic year for her doctoral research project. At Vidyashilp, Dr. Islam plans to expand upon her doctoral thesis and do more research on the interconnections between oral storytelling and memory.

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Cultures and Literatures in English from Northeast India

As a social, political and cultural category, the Northeast of India is a deeply contested discursive terrain. At once removed from and, simultaneously, a hypervisualised “other” to the mainstream, the Northeastern region of the country elicits moments of subliminal awe (such as is the case of the NE as a tourist destination) and on-ground realities of resource extraction, indigenous land rights and ethno-nationalist politics. Such perspectives of the Northeastern region of India—as evinced in the work of scholars such as Sanjib Baruah, Bengt G. Karlsson, Dolly Kikon and others—offer insights into the modernisation of the region with literatures in English being one of the key manifestations of modernity in the Northeast. The questions that research in this area would hope to engage in are:

what is the impact of modernity—propagated through law, policies and politics—on the cultural production in the region?

what has changed, since British rule, to how the Northeast is viewed as a cultural category?

how do literatures and cultures from the Northeast address the idea of the “universal”?

Gendered Narratology

While Paul Ricoeur had famously declared that stories map the human experience of time, topics for research in this area will intend to show how women disrupt historical time and patriarchal narratives through their recourse to memory, affect and body-centred storytelling. Beginning with Hélѐne Cixous’ écriture féminine, research in this area would extend to cultural forms that are transgressive, cyclical and woman-centred in their approach to storytelling. Additionally, the research will also address the negotiations that women make with the historical processes that form the undercurrent to how their stories/narratives are heard and why.

African American Culture and Literature

Using the epistemological, phenomenological and ontological approaches to the study of African American cultural production, this area of research intends to examine the interchanges between African American art forms such as music, fine arts and performance with literature. Taking after the critical insights of Houston A. Baker, Jr., Angela Y. Davis, Tricia Rose and Ralph Ellison, among others, research in this area will address the continued relevance of African American cultural production and literature within the current, global context.

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

JOBETH ANN WARJRI

jobeth.a@vidyashilp.edu.in

Jobeth Ann Warjri holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. She is a two-time recipient of the Zubaan-Sasakawa Peace Foundation Grant for Young Researchers from the Northeast in 2018-2019 and 2022-2023. Her doctoral thesis examined how cultural, linguistic and historical losses encourage kinship affiliations and belonging in the writings of Maya Angelou. Apart from literature, she is interested in how other cultural forms—music, performance, storytelling, art and films—communicate belonging through their appeal to intersectional racial, gendered and national identities in ways that are also universal.

Pre-requisites:

A background in humanities and/or the social sciences and a research proposal under the preferred area of study.

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Determinants of Health and Well-being
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Determinants of Health and Well-being

Ninad is particularly interested in the following research areas:

Determinants of Health and Well-being: What are the various socioeconomic/contextual and psychological factors associated with health outcomes and well-being?

Autobiographical Memories (AMs): What are the determinants and implications of AMs (remembering past events)?

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Ninad Patwardhan

Ninad Patwardhan is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Liberal Arts and Design Studies at Vidyashilp University. He completed his PhD from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay with his doctoral dissertation examining how cognitive processes in autobiographical memories (AMs) relate to well-being. He has also completed his MSc in Psychology (Clinical) from Christ University, Bangalore and BA with a major in Psychology from St. Xavier’s College (Affiliated to University of Mumbai).

Pre-requisites:

Master’s in Psychology required

Desirable:

MKnowledge of data analysis softwares, such as SPSS, R, NVivo

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Religiosity and Well-being: An inter-disciplinary exploration of personal and social perspectives
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Religiosity and Well-being: An inter-disciplinary exploration of personal and social perspectives

This research project explores the relationship between religiosity and well-being, broadly conceived. It adopts a comparative and inter-disciplinary approach by weaving psychological and social-anthropological perspectives. In particular, the research seeks to document diverse religious practices and experiences, and their relationships to people’s sense of well-being. The research intends to explore such practices across diverse religious traditions in India. Within the broad fields of Psychology, religious and spiritual practices and faith have been indicated to influence well-being directly and indirectly. Gratitude, forgiveness, purpose, meaning and social support have been identified by research studies as mediating factors for well-being. However, the defining features of these factors remain understudied, especially in the Indian context. Additionally, this study also aims to understand personality dispositions of the participants, their coping behaviours and the efficacy of existing subjective well-being scales. Although many research studies show a positive relationship between religiosity and well-being, the mechanisms remain poorly understood because of the participant groups and methods they employ. Also, psychiatrists are turning to this research as the dimension of religious practice can be explored for therapeutic purposes (especially for those who already hold religious beliefs). Studies on religiosity and spiritual practices have a long history within anthropology of religion. In the broad area of scholarship in religious studies, scholars have repudiated monotheist conceptions of religion and highlighted that it is not a sui generis category, but a shorthand to encapsulate multiplicity of practices that underpin people’s everyday worlds. Studies have highlighted the entanglements of these everyday worlds with ritual, social order and group politics, or have explored the phenomenological experiences of devotion, rituals and intimacies. In particular, ritual healing through trance or divine possessions have highlighted the social and cultural elements of well-being. The anthropological inquiry of this research project is located in people’s everyday experiences. While the relationship of devotion between the deity and devotee has been explored within phenomenology of religion, the relations in the everyday religious worlds through communities, rituals and intimacies are under-explored in the urban contexts of Karnataka, which this study seeks to explore.

Research approach:

The research is currently located in the state of Karnataka, India. It adopts qualitative social research methods such as ethnographic fieldwork, participant interviews and historical analyses. The Principal Investigators of this project are Dr Setu Havanur and Dr Ranjana Raghunathan, whose academic backgrounds are in Psychology and Sociology/Anthropology respectively.
PhD Candidate profile:

We are seeking doctoral candidates to work on this research project. The ideal candidate will have at least a master’s degree in Psychology, Sociology/Anthropology, Social work, History or allied fields in the social sciences and humanities. Research interests or experience in qualitative research methodologies is required.

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Ranjana Raghunathan

Ranjana Raghunathan is an Assistant Professor in the School of Liberal Arts and Design Studies at Vidyashilp University, Bangalore. Her research interests are in Anthropology of Kinship & Relatedness, Phenomenology of Religion, Everyday Life, and Urban Ethnography. She received her PhD in 2020 from the National University of Singapore (NUS), where she also taught undergraduate courses. Ranjana has conducted ethnographic field research in Singapore and Mumbai, where she explored issues of home/belonging, intimacies, religion and marginalization. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Her doctoral thesis won the Ground-breaking Subject Matter Accolade at the International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize 2021 and the Best PhD Dissertation in South Asian Studies award in NUS for 2020.

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Setu Havanur

Dr. Setu Havanur is an Assistant Professor in the School of Liberal Arts and Design Studies at Vidyashilp University. She comes with over 5 years of teaching experience mainly at undergraduate level but also briefly at postgraduate level. Throughout her career, her focus has been on enriching the classroom experience, especially in the context of teaching Psychology. Her most recent experience comes from working in a dementia research project at the prestigious National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS). Dr. Setu Havanur completed her masters in cognitive science from Centre for Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (University of Allahabad) and earned her PhD from University of Birmingham, UK. Her broad research interests lie in the areas of cognition, pedagogy and mental health. When she is not teaching or doing research, she loves reading, embroidering, cooking, trekking and singing.

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Urban Ethnography around Neighbourhoods in Bangalore
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Urban Ethnography around Neighbourhoods in Bangalore

Areas of Bangalore (or any town/city) are rich with historical and anthropological insights. Barring a few research projects, Bangalore has predominantly been a case study for understanding globalisation, unchecked development, and the consequent exacerbation of urban problems. Consequently, literary writings on the city through fiction and conservation of heritage have gained recent attention. What are the imaginaries of the city for its inhabitants? How does one write about the city beyond the problems of urban development and infrastructure problems? By placing the neighbourhood at the centre of this inquiry, Dr Ranjana Raghunathan, the principal investigator has begun working on this research by attending to the everyday moments in the life of the city neighbourhood.

Research approach:

This research is an urban ethnography and ethno-history project of select neighbourhoods around Bangalore. It traces the social and cultural histories of these neighbourhoods through the experiences, memories and personal histories of its inhabitants. It examines the different aspects of urban neighbourhoods, such as histories of social change, religious communities, educational institutions, heritage sites, and key places of interest. It adopts ethnographic research methods (such as field observation, interviews, oral histories) and historical analyses.
PhD Candidate profile:

We are seeking doctoral candidates to work on this research project. The ideal candidate will have at least a master’s degree in Sociology/Anthropology, Social work, History, Urban Studies or allied fields in the social sciences and humanities. Research interests or experience in qualitative research methodologies is required.

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Ranjana Raghunathan

Ranjana Raghunathan is an Assistant Professor in the School of Liberal Arts and Design Studies at Vidyashilp University, Bangalore. Her research interests are in Anthropology of Kinship & Relatedness, Phenomenology of Religion, Everyday Life, and Urban Ethnography. She received her PhD in 2020 from the National University of Singapore (NUS), where she also taught undergraduate courses.

Ranjana has conducted ethnographic field research in Singapore and Mumbai, where she explored issues of home/belonging, intimacies, religion and marginalization. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Her doctoral thesis won the Ground-breaking Subject Matter Accolade at the International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize 2021. Prior to her foray in academia, Ranjana has worked for over a decade in the development sector and she has a master’s degree in Social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

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RESEARCH SPECIALIZATIONS

At Vidyashilp University, there are three schools that have been established with an interdisciplinary framework. Explore the areas of research under each of these schools, supervised by our faculty community of Leaders and Luminaries.

SCHOOL OF COMPUTATIONAL AND DATA SCIENCES

SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS AND DESIGN STUDIES

SCHOOL OF COMPUTATIONALAND DATA SCIENCES

Explainable and Interpretable AI

Explainable and Interpretable AI

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Prof. Smitha Rao

Prerequisites

Auto Neural Network Architecture

Auto Neural Network Architecture

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Prof. Smitha Rao

Prerequisites

Context Extraction for Hierarchical Organization of Videos in the Educational Domain

Context Extraction for Hierarchical Organization of Videos in the Educational Domain

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. D. C. Kiran

Semantic Textual Similarity

Semantic Textual Similarity

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. N. Mehala

Visible Light Drive Efficient Catalytic Dye Degradation

Visible Light Drive Efficient Catalytic Dye Degradation

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Anupama A. V.

Prerequisites

Desirables

Hydrogen Evolution by Water Splitting

Hydrogen Evolution by Water Splitting

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Anupama A. V.

Prerequisites

Desirables

Toxic / Irritant Gas Sensors

Toxic / Irritant Gas Sensors

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Anupama A. V.

Prerequisites

Desirables

Fractional Calculus

Fractional Calculus

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Bijil Prakash

Prerequisites

Wavelets

Wavelets

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Bijil Prakash

Prerequisites

Combining Data From Different Sources and Making Robust Inferences

Combining Data From Different Sources and Making Robust Inferences

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Prof. R. P. Suresh

Prerequisites

Predicting Failures Beyond Warranty

Predicting Failures Beyond Warranty

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Prof. R. P. Suresh

Prerequisites

Research Portfolio: Chaos and Synchronization of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

Research Portfolio: Chaos and Synchronization of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

Essentials

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Dr. Priyambada Tripathi

Proposed Area of Research:

SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTSAND DESIGN STUDIES

International Economics

International Economics

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Prof. Radhika Lobo

Pre-requisites

Gender Economics: Assessment of Gender Sensitive Infrastructure

Gender Economics: Assessment of Gender Sensitive Infrastructure

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR

Prof. Radhika Lobo

Pre-requisites

Indian Economy: Assessment of Foreign Market Entry Options for Small Businesses in Rural India

Indian Economy: Assessment of Foreign Market Entry Options for Small Businesses in Rural India

RESEARCH
SPECIALIZATIONS

SCHOOL OF COMPUTATIONAL
AND DATA SCIENCES

SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS
AND DESIGN STUDIES