Centre for International Programs, Osmania University

Located on the sprawling and picturesque campus of Osmania University and surrounded by several institutions of higher education and research, OUCIP offers an ideal site for academic interaction and exchange of ideas across disciplines. The serene su xchange of ideas across disciplines. The serene surroundings, easy accessibility, and excellent institutional and infrastructural support make OUCIP a perfect academic ashram for scholars to read, write, and reflect. Conceived primarily as the international face of Osmania University, OUCIP came into existence in August 2006, after the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, handed over the management and administration of American Studies Research Centre (ASRC) to Osmania University. OUCIP is housed in the building complex of ASRC and has inherited its academic and infrastructural strengths. However, OUCIP has broadened its scope and added new fields of study from humanities and social sciences to American Studies. Background American Studies Research Centre (ASRC) was inaugurated on 4th April 1964 in the Library Building of Osmania University, Hyderabad. It functioned as an autonomous institution, with a bi-national Board of Directors, and was funded by the US government. Later, it shifted into its own buildings built with the US government funds on five acres of land given on lease by Osmania University. Over the years, the Centre was nurtured by Indian academics and their American counterparts and it earned the distinction of being one of the two outstanding resource centres on American Studies outside the US (the library of the JFK Institute of North American Studies, Freie Universities, Berlin, being the other). ASRC was a unique bilateral institution funded by the government and administered by Indian academics with an American Fulbrighter as the Director. When the US funding stopped in 1998, the Center faced immense difficulties and tried for substitute sources of funding. In the process its name was changed first to Indo- American Centre for International Studies (IUCIS) and then to Inter-University Centre for International Studies, to attract funding from other sources. In early 2006, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India handed over the management and administration of the Center to Osmania University. A committee was appointed by the then Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Muhammad Suleman Siddiqi, prepared a detailed status report about the Center and suggested measures to consolidate and expand its reach. The committee also recommended that the Center may henceforth be called “Osmania University Centre for International Programmes (OUCIP) and function within the wider academic and administrative structure of Osmania University. OUCIP thus made its beginning in August 2006 with a new name and expanded agenda. The changes are in accordance with the growing need for inter and multi-disciplinary within the academia and the emergence of the city of Hyderabad as a knowledge hub. The OUCIP therefore represents - much like the city in which it is located - the harmonious blend of the old and the new, continuity and change, traditional wisdom and contemporary knowledge. Vision The vision of Osmania University Centre for International programmes (OUCIP) is to evolve into a Centre of Excellence that promotes innovative thinking in different fields of knowledge within and beyond the University. To realize this vision OUCIP would endeavour to become a site for the generation, articulation and exchange of ideas that would foster academic collaborations leading to greater international understanding and goodwill. Mission The Mission of OUCIP is to create a space for an intellectual engagement with the larger community of scholars, intellectuals within the Universities, and also the wider community of citizens outside the academia. With the object of promoting interaction among the universities, colleges, research institutions, policy making bodies, and business associations both from India and abroad, the Centre aims to encourage the pursuit of new branches of knowledge and their dissemination, application and use within and outside the academia to reduce human misery and to promote international understanding. ...view more