Arvind-pal Singh Mandair
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Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair is currently holder of the Sardarni Kuljeet Kaur Bindra Endowed chair in Sikh Studies and Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Hofstra University, New York.
Life
Born in the Hoshiarpur district of Punjab, India, at the age of three Arvind-pal Singh migrated to England with his parents in the mid 1960s. He was educated at King Henry VIII, one of England’s oldest grammar schools, going on to study Applied Chemistry at Coventry University where he took a B.Sc. with First Class Honours, followed by graduate work at the University of Aston in Birmingham where he earned a PhD specializing in the application of magnetic resonance spectroscopy to the study of silicates. His early work was published in leading journals such as Polyhedron: International Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry, and Inorganica Chimica Acta. During the late 1980s Dr. Mandair held posts with several multi-national companies and as Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics where he worked on the synthesis of Superconductors.
Whilst employed at the University of Warwick during the early 1990s Dr. Mandair developed a strong interest in the study of his cultural tradition, fuelled partly by his extensive voluntary work within the British Sikh community at grass-roots level. Much of this work took the form of developing intellectual awareness and capacity building amongst second-generation Sikhs through public engagements, lectures and the publication of a new magazine called the Sikh Reformer (1990-1995) which sparked considerable debate and response among British Sikh students.
During the mid-90s he completed an intellectual transition from science to the humanities by retraining in modern European philosophy, cultural theory and theology but with a specific orientation towards Sikhism and Indian religions. He took a Masters degree in Philosophy (with Distinction) in 1994 followed by a PhD in 1998 both from the University of Warwick. His PhD dissertation, entitled “Thinking Between Cultures: Metaphysics and Cultural Translation”, explores the emergence of Sikh theological hermeneutics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its connections to identity formation amongst the contemporary Sikh Diaspora.
His first teaching post in the humanities was at Coventry University in 1998 where he taught Sikh history and religion. This was followed by a post as Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies where he taught Sikhism and co-organized a major international conference on the theory of dialogue called “Dialogue and Difference”. During the week of 9/11 he migrated to New York with his family in order to take up his current position at Hofstra University. At Hofstra he teaches an introductory course on Sikhism as well as an advanced level course on Sikh Mysticism which will be soon be run as a one-week residential seminar available for the wider Sikh community. He also teaches upper level courses in Indian Religions and is developing theoretical courses that explore the interface between Indian religions, post-modern and post-colonial thought.
Personal
Dr. Mandair’s hobbies include tennis, squash and soccer. He lives on Long Island with his wife Preet and his two children Aman-vir Singh and Sukhmani Kaur.
Publications
Dr. Mandair’s recent publications include the co-edited volume Sikh Religion, Culture and Ethnicity. He is currently completing several book projects including two monographs (Religion and the Politics of Translation, forthcoming Manchester University Press and Theology and Cultural Translation: Revisioning Sikh Experience forthcoming Ashgate Publishing), a new set of translations from the Sikh scriptures entitled Hymns of the Sikh Gurus (co-translated with Christopher Shackle, forthcoming with Routledge) and an edited volume in cultural theory entitled Dialogue and Difference. His current research interests focus on exploring the intersections between religion and comparative cultural theory and rethinking the relationship between mysticism and politics in Indic religions.
Conferences
He has organized and co-organized many international conferences in Sikh studies amongst them Sikh Identity in Transition (University of Warwick 1991), New Perspectives in Sikhism (SOAS 1998) Commemorating the Khalsa (Coventry University 1999), Dialogue and Difference (SOAS 1998), Sikhism and Critical Theory (Hofstra University 2002). In May 2004 Dr. Mandair organized a conference that explored Memory and Trauma in Recent Sikh and Punjabi Experience discussing the emotional and phycological effect of Operation Bluestar on the Sikh community.
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