Aparna Rayaprol is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hyderabad. Her areas of academic interest include gender studies, migration and diaspora, and urban sociology. She is the author of Negotiating Identities: Women in the Indian Diaspora (OUP, 1997).  She has held several administrative positions, was with the Study in India Program (SIP) at the University of Hyderabad since its inception in 1998, and has been closely involved with the internationalization of the university. Her PhD was from the University of Pittsburgh, USA and she did postdoctoral work at Princeton University at the Center for the Study of American Religion in 1998-99.