Our Bureau
Santa Cruz, CA
Through inclusive research and digital storytelling, the University of California, Santa Cruz has started a new academic project that aims to change how people throughout the world view Sikhism.
The research initiative Sikhs in the 21st Century: Remembering the Past, Engaging the Future is not just documenting a religious tradition—it aims to reshape how it’s studied, taught, and understood.
Led by Distinguished Professor of Economics Nirvikar Singh and housed at The Humanities Institute (THI), the project is helping to reimagine Sikh and Punjabi Studies for a global, digital age through a growing collection of visually rich, academically rigorous videos on Sikh history and culture.
“Much of the existing material either glosses over complexities or makes assumptions that are not rigorously founded,” said Singh, Co-Director of the Center for Analytical Finance, where he was the founding Director.
Singh previously held the Sarbjit Singh Aurora Chair of Sikh and Punjabi Studies (2010–2020) and directed UC Santa Cruz’s South Asian Studies Initiative.
“This project asks: What if we take a step back, and not take anything for granted, even if it is conventional scholarly wisdom?” Singh said.
That kind of deep questioning is core to THI’s mission to advance inclusive, interdisciplinary, and public-facing humanities research, said Professor of Linguistics and THI Faculty Director Pranav Anand.
The project, which is based at the Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, creates multimedia content that examines the development of Sikh institutions, the effects of colonialism, and the multifaceted identities of the Sikh diaspora.
The videos aim to correct misreadings that frame the Sikh tradition as either amorphous for much of its history, or as being shaped mostly by colonial-era pressures.
Singh and his project collaborators push back against such narratives, which he says stem from outdated or under-evidenced scholarly efforts.
Yet the project is about more than correcting the record. It’s also about expanding access—to ideas, to archives, and to scholarship itself.
The project is also deeply personal for Singh, a scholar raised in the Sikh tradition and long attuned to how it has often been misunderstood, even in academia.
“Videos don’t always fit neatly into traditional academic incentives, so younger or marginalized scholars can be reluctant to engage,” Singh explained. “But these scholars bring crucial insights, and we wanted to give them a voice. In doing this, we have also been fortunate to work with The Teaching and Learning Center at UC Santa Cruz, which has deep expertise in producing materials for online education.”
In response, Sikhs in the 21st Century actively seeks to involve scholars from Punjab – the birthplace of the Sikh tradition – and those working in the US, but outside elite networks.
The project also foregrounds a careful curation of images and sources, laying the groundwork for a future archive that can serve as a foundation for further research.
In Nirvikar Singh’s words: “It’s about learning and understanding—real, nuanced, grounded understanding for everyone. That’s an important role of the humanities in education.”
This project is supported by the 5Rivers Foundation, The Humanities Institute, and the UCSC Humanities Division.
