Renowned historian Prof Badri Narayan Tiwari appointed VC of TISS Mumbai

Prof Badri Narayan Tiwari has been appointed as the new Vice Chancellor of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, filling a nearly two-year leadership gap at the institute. The Ministry of Education issued the appointment order on July 30.

This is the first vice chancellor appointment at TISS under the revised selection guidelines introduced by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in 2023.

Prof Tiwari, a noted social historian and cultural anthropologist, was previously serving as the Director of the G B Pant Social Science Institute in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh.

He holds a PhD in Modern History from the University of Allahabad and has an academic background that includes significant work in the areas of social history, cultural anthropology, and Dalit studies.

Before leading the G B Pant Institute, he was associated with the Centre for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion at the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

"It is with immense excitement that we welcome Prof. Badri Narayan as the new Vice-Chancellor of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences,” TISS said in a post on X.

Prof Manoj Kumar Tiwari, Director of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Mumbai, had been holding additional charge of TISS until now.

TISS was established in 1936 as the Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work and renamed in 1944.

It was declared deemed to be a university in 1964 under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956. In recent years, the institute was brought under the administrative purview of the union government.

“Since its inception, the vision of the TISS has been to be an institution of excellence in higher education that continually responds to changing social realities through the development and application of knowledge, towards creating a people-centered, ecologically sustainable, and just society that promotes and protects dignity, equality, social justice, and human rights for all,” the institute notes on its official website.