Impact through innovation.
The PPP Centre is the primary research institution of the Thapar School of Liberal Arts & Sciences — a federal architecture in which eight research themes operate as semi-autonomous scholarly communities under one shared mission. Each theme has its own intellectual agenda; together they hold the boundary where disciplines meet.
The PPP Centre rests on a deliberate governance philosophy. Intellectual vitality at the boundaries of disciplines is best sustained not by rigid silos, but by a federal model — shared sovereignty at the level of the Centre, meaningful autonomy at the level of each theme.
Every funded project at PPP carries a non-negotiable condition: the meaningful participation of undergraduate students in the research process. This is not a peripheral criterion — it is a core one, ensuring that the boundary between research and teaching remains permeable, which is precisely the boundary that defines a liberal arts research culture.
As themes mature — in faculty, funding, publications, and external partnerships — they are designed to evolve into fully independent units under the PPP umbrella. The Centre is not a fixed structure but a living one: an incubator for the next generation of TSLAS’s intellectual infrastructure.
Eight domains in which TSLAS faculty have built scholarly momentum and where the liberal arts have a distinctive analytical contribution to make.
Evidence-based research informing policy and institutional transformation for the universities of the future — locally and globally. TSLAS as a site of scholarly reflection on the very conditions that govern its own existence.
Anchored by the Thapar Higher Education Survey (THES) — a longitudinal four-year cycle.
Designing and testing new models of teaching, assessment, and engagement aligned with the realities of the digital, AI-driven era — with a particular focus on soft pedagogical interventions.
Subtle, low-cost shifts in questioning, framing, sequencing, feedback, and relational tone — that profoundly reshape learning.
Understanding how humans learn — from neurons to networks — and how technology, motivation, and context shape the learning process. Bridging cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and educational practice.
How does chronic AI co-pilot use affect long-term memory and executive function?
How can higher education nurture a generation of learners who see sustainability not as sacrifice, but as a joyful expression of human flourishing, and excellence-seeking?
Three pillars: ecosystem restoration, renewable energy, regeneration and circular economy — under a 6E framework.
How personality and culture interact to shape thought, behaviour, and institutions — studied on their own conceptual terms rather than through Western templates.
Towards an Indigenous Culture Inventory for India and South Asia: Excellence Orientation, Micro-Collectivism, Binary Orientation.
ACT envisions a future where transdisciplinary cooperation drives innovative and sustainable technologies to address complex societal challenges, transforming knowledge into meaningful real-world impact.
Key thematic areas where ACT brings technology and human sciences together to address real-world challenges.
How can Indian Knowledge Systems contribute to a contemporary global philosophy of education, sustainability, and human flourishing — without losing epistemic integrity or cultural depth?
Rigorously empirical: reclaiming indigenous epistemologies through comparative and quantitative scholarship.
How artificial intelligence is reshaping teaching, learning, and institutional design across India’s higher education landscape — with a central focus on ethical deployment.
The scholarly infrastructure behind TSLAS’s DISHA Model and AI Readiness Framework.
Concrete projects already underway across the eight themes.
A structured four-year cycle of stakeholder surveys mapping expectations, teaching quality, student progression, and employer evaluations under NEP 2020 — building a longitudinal evidence base for institutional policy.
Three research thrusts bridging evidence-based classroom strategies with scalable institutional practice.
How does a learner’s cognitive load shift when moving from generating an idea with AI to critiquing an AI-generated one?
Three interconnected pillars guiding research toward ecological resilience, clean energy, and sustainable resource use.
An empirical project to develop a culturally grounded inventory across regions and professions, with publications and global collaborations.
EEG and eye-tracking research at the boundary of cognitive science, design, and leadership.
Collaborative research culminating in Bhakti movement symposium.
Two of the PPP themes have already achieved enough institutional weight to operate as sub-units, with their own scholarly identities and external profiles.
Art, Cognition & Technology Centre
ACT Centre strategically aims to instigate and promote transdisciplinary research. Academicians are actively engaged in this initiative by identifying transdisciplinary research topics connecting with colleagues from diverse knowledge domains.
Thapar Indian Knowledge System Centre
One of TSLAS’s most distinctive institutional assets — an empirically rigorous engagement with the subcontinent’s own intellectual traditions: epistemologies, sciences, aesthetic philosophies, and political thought. It reclaims indigenous knowledge not through nostalgia but through comparative scholarship tested against the evidence.
The Pedagogy & Curricular Innovation and AI for Education themes form the institutional home of DISHA — the India-centred educational philosophy at the heart of TSLAS’s Strategy 2030. Faculty here do not merely implement the model; they study, evaluate, and publish on it — ensuring the model improves over time through evidence rather than assumption.
Three phases through which the PPP Centre matures across Strategy 2030.
The faculty leading the PPP Centre’s research, programmes, and public engagement — drawn from across TSLAS’s disciplines.
Vice Chancellor, TIET · Founding Dean, TSLAS
An accomplished researcher and scholar in leadership development and sustainability, Prof Nair was instrumental in founding TSLAS and continues to shape its India-centred vision for the next generation of liberal arts and sciences education.
View profile
Political Science
Biomedical Signal Processing & AI
Indian Philosophy
Sociology
Engineering Psychology
Environment & Sustainability
Economic Psychology
Strategy & Entrepreneurship
Deep Learning & Computer Vision