New director Craig Jeffrey to head Australia-India Institute think-tank

MELBOURNE: One of the world's leading experts on contemporary India, Craig Jeffrey, has been appointed as the next Director of the Australia-India Institute, the country's national centre for research, teaching and analysis on India.

Jeffrey is currently a professor of Development Geography at the University of Oxford.

The new role was announced following the launch of the think-tank's new centre in New Delhi - AII @Delhi.

"It comes at a time when the relationship between Australia and India is growing rapidly in importance, along with the need for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of India's past and potential future significance for Australia and its region," Melbourne-based AII said in a statement.

Jeffrey's scholarly interests, which complement the AII's growing spectrum of expertise, cover contemporary Indian society and global development, with a particular focus on Indian democracy, educational transformation, globalisation, and the politics of youth.

He will succeed the institute's inaugural director Amitabh Mattoo who has returned to India to serve as Honorary Director of the AII@ Delhi, and professor of International Relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Mattoo welcomed Jeffrey's appointment and said he was a "great successor; an inspired choice" and a "truly exceptional scholar with credentials to position the Australia India Institute as the leading academic and policy centre for the study of India across the English-speaking world."