Founding Director Office of Graduate Studies

Location: Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana (Delhi-NCR)

Department: Office of Graduate Studies

Reports To: Dean, Research and Development Office

Role Type: Full-time

Experience: 10-15 years

ABOUT THE ROLE

Ashoka University is establishing an Office of Graduate Studies to build a top-class PhD and postdoctoral programme and is looking for a Founding Director to lead it. The Director will serve as the institutional owner for PhD scholars and postdoctoral fellows, orchestrate stakeholders across the University, and create a doctoral and postdoctoral experience that is the best in India and globally competitive.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Partner on Programme Design

• Partner on existing programmes: Work with departments, PhD coordinators and supervisors to sustain the quality and success of Ashoka's current doctoral programmes.
• Co-design new programmes: Partner with faculty to design and launch innovative programmes like the practice-oriented PhD.
• Support the post-doctoral programme: Support the post-doctoral fellows programme end-to-end, including the Simons–Ashoka Early Career Fellowship

Build and Govern the Office

• Establish and lead the Office: Serve as the single point of institutional ownership for all PhD scholars and post-doctoral fellows, building the team and setting its multi-year roadmap with university leadership.
• Set policy and the regulatory framework: Draft and periodically update PhD ordinances and fellowship policies in line with UGC and other applicable requirements.
• Build systems and processes: Build scalable, well-documented SOPs and digital systems for scholar management, application tracking and compliance monitoring.

Own the Scholar Lifecycle

• Support and engage scholars: Own the scholar journey end-to-end, from onboarding, advisor matching, coursework, comprehensive exams, milestone reviews, thesis submission and convocation.
• Coordinate events and conferences: Build cohort community and research culture across departments through seminars, retreats and writing groups, and push scholars towards international conferences, collaborations and exchange opportunities.

Drive Outreach and Admissions

• Build the applicant pipeline: Guide the outreach office in positioning the programme across India's leading institutions and running the annual engagement calendars.
• Run admissions and selection: Oversee guidelines, rubrics, timelines and the coordination of departmental committees, ensuring a consistently high bar for scholar recruitment.

Steward Partnerships, Placements and Programme Health

• Manage stakeholders: Coordinate across department chairs, supervisors, PhD coordinators, RDO, the Registrar's office, finance, admissions and communications, serving as the single point of contact between scholars, faculty and leadership.
• Drive graduate placements: Build academic and non-academic placement pathways postdoctoral and faculty applications, industry and policy links, job-market preparation with the Career Development Office and track outcomes cohort by cohort.
• Report on programme health: Maintain university-wide dashboards on scholar numbers, funding sources, time-to-degree, attrition, publication and placement outcomes, and benchmark these against leading Indian and global programmes.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• Master's degree minimum: a PhD is preferred.
• A scholar in orientation, whatever the credential: someone who has done research, understands what the doctoral journey actually feels like, and will be taken seriously by faculty.
• 10–15 years of experience across academia, research institutions, or research-adjacent organisations
• Experience having built or run a programme, centre or research initiative.
• Working knowledge of UGC regulations, PhD ordinance frameworks and the statutory requirements governing doctoral education in India
• Exposure to fellowship and funding structures for doctoral scholars and post-doctoral fellows, including government and private funding agencies.

Who You Are

Knows what a good PhD programme looks like and can hold a substantive conversation with faculty about research quality, supervision norms and training design.

• Comfortable building structure where none exists, and able to operate at both the strategic and day-to-day levels.
• Scholars and faculty must want to go to this person, and they must be able to hold difficult conversations without escalating them.
• Strong public-facing presence for outreach, recruitment, industry partnerships and institutional collaborations
• Comfortable with ambiguity, willing to build systems where none exist, and happy to operate hands-on rather than only at the level of strategy.

ABOUT ASHOKA UNIVERSITY: www.ashoka.edu.in