Distinguished Lecture: Christian Missionaries and Faith-Based Development Aid in India, 1960s-2000s

January 31, 2017

Professor Idesbald Goddeeris, Professor of History, University of Leuven, Belgium delivered a Distinguished Lecture titled “Christian Missionaries and Faith-Based Development Aid in India, 1960s-2000s” on January 28, 2017 at Nalanda University.

This lecture discussed how faith-based development aid evokes varied reactions, arouses suspicion in our age of secularization and postcolonial sensitivity, but it also has its advocates, who for instance, emphasise that religion is an important aspect of people’s daily lives worldwide, especially in those areas where development practitioners are active. Professor Idesbald also talked about a current project which aims to explore the particularities of Christian development aid, analyze how they evolved in the post-war period, and understand if and how they played a part in its effectiveness. 

Professor Idesbald Goddeeris, Professor of History, University of Leuven delivering the Distinguished Lecture

Bio-Sketch of Professor Idesbald Goddeeris

Idesbald Goddeeris is a Slavist and a historian. He teaches courses on colonial history, history of Poland, and history of India, and is also Director of the History Program. His research mainly focuses on the relationship of our society with other cultures and political regimes. He particularly examines this by means of the history of migration, European identities, transnational social movements, East-West and North-South contacts, communist secret services during the Cold War, development aid, and postcolonial memories. He was a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics (2009) and the University of Pennsylvania (2014), and recently also lectured at the universities of, inter alia, Delhi, Mumbai, Kinshasa, Krakow, Irkutsk, and Kolkata. He is also a senior member of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, where he coordinates the Leuven India Focus, and is an Expert in the Commission ‘History and Archaeology’ at the Foundation for Scientific Research (FWO- Vlaanderen).