The Fund enriches Yale’s understanding of global cultures by supporting one-semester to one-year residencies for foreign scholars in the humanities and social sciences. It focuses on scholars from regions where improved relations and mutual understanding with the United States are especially important, including Africa, the Caucasus, Central Asia, China, non-EU Eastern Europe, Turkey, Russia, Latin America, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia.
Each Rice Lecturer, nominated by a Yale faculty mentor from a MacMillan Center area studies council, teaches one undergraduate course per semester on a topic related to their region that complements the council’s offerings. Equally important is their active participation in the council’s intellectual community through both formal and informal engagement with students and faculty.
Spring 2026 Rice Fellow
Ornit Shani teaches Modern Indian History at the Department of Asian Studies, University of Haifa, where she heads the India Programme. She is the author of How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise (Cambridge University Press, 2018; and Penguin Random House India, 2018). The book won the 2019 Kamaladevi Chattophadyay New India Foundation Prize for the best book on modern India. It has been reviewed in academic journals, newspapers and magazines, and featured on a number of podcasts.