For many years, NIRMAN has welcomed university students and faculty to Varanasi for programmes that combine academic study with direct engagement with the city and its people.
Varanasi offers an extraordinary setting for this kind of learning. Its ancient lanes, religious traditions, artistic practices, neighbourhoods and everyday life exist alongside rapid social change, modernity and globalisation. Students encounter the city not only through classrooms and texts, but through conversations and experiences with artists, artisans, boatmen, families and communities, guided by faculty who help place these encounters in broader historical, cultural and intellectual contexts.
NIRMAN's international study programmes have sought to explore India as both deeply rooted in particular languages, histories and cultural traditions and part of an interconnected contemporary world.
Our approach brings together ideas that are too often separated: theory and practice, intellectual inquiry and lived experience, traditional arts and contemporary life, the local and the global, discipline and freedom. We seek to create programmes that are intellectually rigorous while remaining imaginative, humane and grounded in the realities of the place in which we live and work.
Varanasi offers an extraordinary setting for this kind of learning. Its ancient lanes, religious traditions, artistic practices, neighbourhoods and everyday life exist alongside rapid social change, modernity and globalisation. Students encounter the city not only through classrooms and texts, but through conversations and experiences with artists, artisans, boatmen, families and communities, guided by faculty who help place these encounters in broader historical, cultural and intellectual contexts.
NIRMAN's international study programmes have sought to explore India as both deeply rooted in particular languages, histories and cultural traditions and part of an interconnected contemporary world.
Our approach brings together ideas that are too often separated: theory and practice, intellectual inquiry and lived experience, traditional arts and contemporary life, the local and the global, discipline and freedom. We seek to create programmes that are intellectually rigorous while remaining imaginative, humane and grounded in the realities of the place in which we live and work.
New Study Abroad programmes for 2026–27 will be announced on September 1. Please check back then.