Coming in the fall of 2026, Assistant Professor of Sociology & Peacebuilding Dr. Gaurav Pathania will be leading an intercultural opportunity throughout India. Born and raised in northern India, this marks the first time in EMU history that a non-Western born professor will be leading an intercultural to the country where they were born and raised. Pathania has spent the majority of his scholarship centered around the caste system and how it still greatly affects people today.
“I know many universities where Indian-Americans are taking [a similar] trip, but they haven’t spent much time there so they are also learning. In my case, I spent… until my mid-30s [in India], I moved here only six years ago,” shares Pathania. His extensive background growing up in and advocating against the caste system will play a central role in the curriculum for the semester. Students will have opportunities to learn from a wide variety of topics during the trip as they will be traveling through one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world.
The first leg of the journey will take place in southern India, where Ashok and Florina Xavier, two alumni of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, are based. Together they run a non-governmental organization focused on building community sustainability and working with refugees. For the first month or so, students will be living on their campus and learning about their mission in Tamil Nadu, near the city of Chennai.
Ajmir Nazari is a first-year student who has shown interest in the intercultural. “I’ve been [to India], I know how it is, and I want to experience that again,” Nazari comments. “It was a fun experience, but now I want to go and experience… India as a student.” The second part of the journey will be in central India, where students will get to experience Mumbai and Pune, both cities in the state of Maharashtra. Students will have opportunities to explore and learn about what makes the culture of central India so unique from both the northern and southern regions.
“In the last month, we will be in Delhi…, we will be staying on campus [at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)] for a few days, and we have so many sites to take [students to visit],” mentions Pathania. During this final month students will spend the first half of the time living alongside university students in the dorms at JNU, and the later half will be spent on campus at the Indian Institute of Technology. Pathania highlights, “One of the advantages of being on campus is that our students will be studying with those students, and they might also join our classes, this will be a very free flowing idea of teaching.”
The list of historic spots that the group will visit during this period includes such sites as the Taj Mahal, the Golden Temple, the cities of Jaipur and Delhi, and the town of Dharamshala. Thanks to Pathania’s connections all around the world, the group has been granted a private audience in Dharamshala with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism. Additionally, the intercultural group will get to experience Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights while on their trip, which will fall in early November in 2026.
First-year nursing major Hannah Nisly is interested in the semester and appreciates the wide range of topics that students will be exposed to, including healthcare. She comments, “I think it will be a really good experience for the emotional side of nursing, to see how it is different in different places. A lot of [the healthcare] is not actually organized by the government…, it’s community based because of underfunding.”
“I am super excited about experiencing India… along with students. Gaurav brings the on-the-ground expertise and deep knowledge of the culture, while I bring experience of co-leading an intercultural semester,” says Dr. Mary Sprunger, a professor of history at EMU. Sprunger, whose interests lie in studying gender, world religions, and food history, among other things, will be co-leading the semester with Pathania. The previous intercultural semester she led to China in 2018 focused on many of these topics as well. She continues, “I could go to India as a tourist, but I know first-hand that immersion in another culture is a much richer experience. This is my opportunity to get that in India and offer the same opportunity to students.”
Sprunger concludes, “I’m eager to understand the vast regional differences as we go from southern India all the way to the north. And of course there’s the food!”The deadline to apply is Oct. 6, applications can be found at emu.edu/intercultural/future-programs. If you have questions, please contact Gaurav Pathania (gaurav.pathania@emu.edu) or Mary Sprunger (mary.sprunger@emu.edu).
