Jackson School Professor and former South Asia Center Director Sunila S. Kale, recognized for her scholarship and leadership in the study of India in the U.S., has been elected to serve as the next president of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS). Her four-year term will begin on July 1, 2026.
Kale was selected for the role by a group of delegates who represent the AIIS consortium of universities and colleges.
Founded in 1961, AIIS works to expand expertise and knowledge of India in the United States by supporting American scholarship about India. This includes offering of fellowships, language programs, digital scholarship, international learning opportunities and an annual book prize.
Sunila S. Kale
“It’s a privilege to have been elected to lead AIIS, an organization that is essential to the ongoing vitality of research, teaching, and study of India and South Asia across the humanities, social sciences, and arts,” Kale said. “The Institute’s language programs and regional offices throughout India, research fellowships, Centers for Ethnomusicology and Art and Archaeology, dissertation-to-book workshop, and support for study abroad programs all play a crucial role in sustaining the vibrant study of India in the U.S. academy.”
Kale, who has been faculty at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies for over 15 years, teaches in the South Asia Studies and International Studies programs. From 2015 to 2021, she served as director of the South Asia Center, a National Resource Center supported by the U.S. Department of Education, and as chair of the graduate program in South Asia Studies.
Her research, writing, and teaching cross the fields of Indian politics and political economy, yoga studies, political economy of development, energy studies, informal labor, and capitalism. An author of several books on current issues in India – most recently she co-authored “The Yoga of Power” (Columbia University Press 2025) with Jackson School Professor Christian Lee Novetzke – her work has also appeared in Foreign Affairs and in U.S. and Indian media.
She has received major grants from Fulbright-Hays, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Carnegie Opportunities Fund, and the UW’s Simpson Center for the Humanities and Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies.
Kale holds a Ph.D. from University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. from the University of Chicago.