Francesca Orsini, FBA is an Italian scholar of South Asian literature. She is currently Professor of Hindi and South Asian Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. [1] [2] [3] She previously lectured at the University of Cambridge, before joining SOAS in 2006. [1] For the 2013/2014 academic year, she was Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. [3]
In 1998, Orsini married Peter Kornicki, an English Japanologist. [4] Orsini is an Italian citizen, and has not applied for either UK citizenship or permanent residence. [5]
In July 2017, Orsini was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. [2]
Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been described as a standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas of North India. Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is one of the two official languages of the Government of India, along with English. It is an official language in nine states and three union territories and an additional official language in three other states. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where it is also an official language alongside English. In India, Urdu is an Eighth Schedule language whose status and cultural heritage is recognized by the Constitution of India; it also has an official status in several Indian states. In Nepal, Urdu is a registered regional dialect.
Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Northern and Central India and Pakistan, and used as a lingua franca in both countries. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi and Urdu. Thus, it is also called Hindi–Urdu. Colloquial registers of the language fall on a spectrum between these standards.
Awadhi, also known as Audhi (औधी), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in northern India and Nepal. It is primarily spoken in the Awadh region of present-day Uttar Pradesh, India. The name Awadh is connected to Ayodhya, the ancient city, which is regarded as the homeland of the Hindu god Rama. See also, the Oudh state which was settled in North India during the Mughal rule. It was, along with Braj Bhasha, used widely as a literary vehicle before being displaced by Hindustani in the 19th century.
Choudhri Mohammed Naim is an American scholar of Urdu language and literature. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
Ronald Stuart McGregor, commonly R. S. McGregor or Stuart McGregor, was a philologist of the Hindi language. Best known as editor of the Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary, a standard reference work published in 1993 after a sustained effort of twenty years, McGregor was a Fellow of Wolfson College and retired as Reader in Hindi at the University of Cambridge.
Christopher Shackle, is Emeritus Professor of Modern Languages of South Asia at the University of London.
Peter Francis Kornicki FBA is an English Japanologist. He is Emeritus Professor of Japanese at Cambridge University and Emeritus Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge.
Shirin M. Rai, is an interdisciplinary scholar who works across the political science and international relations boundaries. She is known for her research on the intersections between international political economy, globalisation, post-colonial governance, institutions and processes of democratisation and gender regimes. She was a professor of politics and international studies at the University of Warwick, and is the founding director of Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development (WICID).
Michael James Hutt is Professor of Nepali and Himalayan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is engaged in the study of modern and contemporary Nepali literature, and as a translator. He has also published on Nepali politics, Nepali art and architecture, censorship in the Nepali print media, and the Bhutanese refugee issue.
Professor Anvita Abbi is an Indian linguist and scholar of minority languages, known for her studies on tribal languages and other minority languages of South Asia. In 2013, she was honoured with the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award by the Government of India for her contributions to the field of linguistics.
Carmen Blacker OBE FBA was a British Japonologist. She was a lecturer in Japanese at the University of Cambridge.
Ann Margaret Jefferson, is a British scholar of French literature. She was a fellow and tutor in French at New College, Oxford, from 1987 to 2015, and professor of French at the University of Oxford from 2006 to 2015.
Rachel Dwyer is a professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, University of London.
Ramya Sreenivasan is an Indian scholar of English and early modern Indian history. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. She was originally appointed in the Department of South Asian Studies in 2009. Best known for her book The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen, she is a winner of the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize.
Anne Mary Hudson, was a British literary historian and academic. She was a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1963 to 2003, and Professor of Medieval English at the University of Oxford from 1989 to 2003.
Eugénie Jane Andrina Henderson, FBA was a British linguist and academic, specialising in phonetics. From 1964 to 1982, she was Professor of Phonetics at the University of London. She served as Chair of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain from 1977 to 1980, and President of the Philological Society from 1984 to 1988.
Joya Chatterji FBA is Professor of South Asian History and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. She specialises in modern South Asian history and was the editor of the journal Modern Asian Studies for ten years.
Barahmasa is a poetic genre popular in the Indian subcontinent derived primarily from the Indian folk tradition. It is usually themed around a woman longing for her absent lover or husband, describing her own emotional state against the backdrop of passing seasonal and ritual events. The progression of months is a fundamental component of the genre, but the number of months is not necessarily barah or "twelve" as similar poetic forms known as chaumasas, chaymasas and ashtamasas also exist in the same lineage of folk traditions.