Doctor of Philosophy in South Asian Studies

The Department of South Asian Studies offers programs of study leading to the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree. While graduate work is tailored to individual intellectual interests, it is our expectation that all doctoral students will ground their work in primary language materials and participate in broadly interdisciplinary studies of South Asian languages, histories, and cultures. The Department has historic and well-defined courses of graduate study in Sanskrit and Indian Studies and in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies. It is our expectation that candidates for doctoral study will propose other programs in South Asian Studies. Such programs may have a regional emphasis, a disciplinary or multi-disciplinary emphasis, or an emphasis on a particular era of South Asian history, including modern South Asia. Some of the most exciting multi-disciplinary work in the global academy today has been pioneered by scholars of South Asian Studies, and this program intends to provide a platform for such study here at Harvard. All of the Department's Ph.D. programs emphasize the study of South Asian languages as foundational for scholarly work. Currently, members of the Department focus in their own work on Hindi-Urdu (including Avadhi, Braj, and modern dialects), Middle Indic (Pali, Prakrit), Nepali, Sanskrit (Vedic, Classical), Tamil (Classical, Modern), and Tibetan (Classical, Modern). The Department also supports instruction in Bahasa Indonesia, Bengali, Burmese, Gujarati, Sindhi, and Thai. Persian is regularly offered through the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. We emphasize a rigorous approach to South Asian texts and traditions, the cultural, intellectual, and social practices that they inform, and the diverse disciplinary perspectives that are needed to study and write about them. Students are encouraged to view their chosen topics in their historical contexts while also exploring their significance to ongoing South Asian traditions and/or to contemporary issues in the humanities and social sciences.

GSAS welcomes applications for admission from individuals who have or will have by the time of matriculation a BA, BS, or equivalent undergraduate degree (for prospective international students, a three- or four-year undergraduate degree from an institution of recognized standing) and actively seeks applicants from groups historically underrepresented in graduate schools.
Applicants are required to upload transcript copies from each college/university they attended into our online application system: official hard copy/paper transcripts are not required at the time of application.
Applicants who are non-native English speakers and who received their undergraduate degree from an academic institution where English is not the primary language of instruction must prove their English proficiency by earning either a minimum score of 80 on the Internet based test (iBT) of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or a minimum score of 6.5 on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Academic test.