Dr Jancy was the former VC of Mahatma Gandhi University and
founder Vice Chancellor of Central University of Kerala. The first woman Vice
Chancellor of Kerala, Dr Jancy James, has been selected for the prestigious
Prof M V Pylee Award for the best academician. Instituted by Cochin University of Science and Technology. The award carries an amount of Rs one lakh and a citation.
An academic with
28 years of teaching experience, Prof. James began her academic career as a
lecturer at the St.Theresa College Ernakulam. An expert in drama, comparative
literature and regional literature, Prof. James became the director of the
Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Kerala, in 1992. She has
authored ten books and published more than 60 research
papers and popular articles in English and Malayalam.
An established author, literary
critic, researcher and translator, Dr Jancy has served as member of Kendra
Sahitya Akademi and as the National President of the Comparative Literature
Association of India. A post-doctoral Commonwealth Fellow in University of
Warwick, UK, Jancy was also a Faculty Research Fellow in Toronto University,
Canada. She was a member of the Indian delegation headed by the HRD Minister at
the Indo-US Higher Education Summit at Washington under the Obama-Singh
Initiative in 2011.
The first formal Open Access
Repository of Doctoral Dissertations in any Indian University was envisaged in
2008 under the initiative of Dr. Jancy James at Mahatma Gandhi University,
Kottayam. It was an internal initiative without any directions or
funding from external agencies. It covers dissertations in English, Malayalam,
Hindi and Sanskrit accepted by the university during the past 30 years. H.E.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Former President of India on 9th November 2008, launched
the OA archive. From then on entire knowledge generated by doctoral research at
the university is accessible to public through the web. An ingenuously developed software
-NityaDArch, which can process Indian languages, was also used for digital
Library development for the first time in India.
H E Dr. A P J
Abdul Kalam, Former President of India who examined the project in detail
stated at the time of its launching that ‘the project is an important step
towards democratization of knowledge. He also stated that he was sure the model
of digital archives created by MG University underr her intiave will be emulated by other Indian
universities leading to transparency in the education system’. Lauding her efforts
to put the doctoral dissertations in the public domain for Open Access; Dr.
Richard M. Stallman, the Father of Free Software Movement stated that he also
was always for the freedom to redistribute such research documents and thereby
widen the reach of public funded research activities. He commented that it as an
important Open Access Initiative from India. The project was selected by INTUTE
as the best web based archive for research on South Asian subjects. It also
secured the State TI Award for web based Research /Educational Resource. It
influenced the framing of UGC Regulations on PhD Research of 2010 and the
establishment of National Repository of PhD Dissertations – Shodganga under
UGC, Government of India.
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