AIIS mourns the passing and celebrates the career and legacy of Joseph W. Elder, who died at age ninety-four in Madison, Wisconsin on January 26, 2025. The fourth President of AIIS from 1986 to 1994, and then Chair of the Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2002, he was known to all simply as “Joe.” A sociologist by training, he was affiliated with the Departments of Sociology and South Asian Studies (now Asian Languages and Cultures) at the University of Wisconsin. He taught there for 53 years, from 1961 until 2014, and also conducted extensive research in India and Nepal, including as an AIIS Senior Fellow in the very first batch of AIIS Fellows in 1962-63.
Joe was active with the Institute from its earliest years, serving on several committees. Three of the signal developments in AIIS during Joe’s tenure as President were the reorganization of the AIIS Language Program, the initial computerization of Institute operations in its Chicago office, and the purchase of the land in Gurgaon (now Gurugram) where the Institute’s main office in India, along with the Center for Art and Archaeology and the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology, are now located. His contributions to the field have been recognized by two AIIS junior fellowships that bear his name, which provide junior fellows with support toward their dissertation research in India; and by the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Social Sciences, awarded every year by AIIS for the best unpublished first book manuscript in the social scientific study of India.
Please click here for a lengthy tribute to Joe Elder written by John Cort