Dr. Anant Kumar

Head, CBCS

About Us

Welcome to CBCS at XISS!

The purpose of establishing this new inter-disciplinary Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences at XISS is to create and provide a space to academicians, researchers, and students to think, develop and come out with new ideas, thoughts, research, and programmes. The Centre promotes and facilitates interactions amongst scholars, Philosophers, Psychologists, Sociologists, Scientists, Historians, Artists, Industry Practitioners, and others.
Behavioural and cognitive studies have become central to academic thoughts in recent times with the onset of dominant metaphors such as knowledge society. Knowledge creation has always been an evolutionary process having its roots in human evolution, individual and collective thinking, and life experiences, perspectives, and worldview. It is beyond disciplinary boundaries.
XISS believes in ‘putting the last first’ philosophy in all its endeavour and academic pursuits. The Centre believes in breaking the boundaries of knowledge hierarchy, dominants thoughts, and methodological debates of science; and promote critical thinking and research central to the human quest for knowledge and the common good.
The Centre has also established a Counselling Centre. Besides, we are also looking forward to developing collaborative academic and research partnerships between the Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences and other like-minded institutions to promote new ideas and research of mutual interest.
Thank you.

Courses

Behavioural Science

Dr. Anant Kumar

2 Credits

Behavioural Science course focuses on understanding and predicting human actions, specifically how humans really make decisions in the real-world from interdisciplinary perspective. The course emphasis is on understanding the way that emotions, the environment, and social factors influence our decisions. The course provides an in-depth knowledge and understanding of human behaviour, particular factors influencing behaviour such as attitude, motivation, personality, etc., so the students can easily understand individual/community/social, and group behaviour and develop social development interventions.

Communication for Social and Behavioural Change

Dr. Anant Kumar

2 Credits

Communication for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC) course offered as Communication for Development (C4D) provides necessary social and behavioural skills to conduct actual tasks in working environments. The pedagogical approach adopted follows basic principles of the work-based competency approach to link analysis and real-life application with theories and concepts. The curriculum focuses on understanding of theory, principles, and dynamics of communication, knowledge of conventional and modern communication media and analysing the functions of communication tools with the significant role of communication in promoting and strengthening equitable society.

Soft Skills and Personality Development

Dr. Anant Kumar & Dr. Raj Shree Verma

1.5 Credits

The way we communicate in social and business settings is constantly evolving and changing that requires adaptation and preparedness to learn new skills and adopt new technologies and etiquettes. This course train students to learn soft skills to interact with internal and external stakeholders by transferring practical and theoretical knowledge to imbibe good social and business etiquette. The course emphasis is on developing professional and interpersonal communications to facilitate all-round development of personality to secure a good position in one's life and career.

Research

The Centre is committed to create an open space for research and critical thinking.

The Centre is guided by the advisory board that evaluates proposal submitted by the scholars.

The scholars interested in being associated with the Centre can share their research idea along with their CV. Write to Head, Dr. Anant Kumar. Email: anantkumar@xiss.ac.in

Based on the merit of the proposal, the scholar will be provided affiliation and resources available at XISS to work on their research ideas.

Behavioural Lab

The lab comprises a team of behavioural scientists and specialists in decision science who provide consultancies and do research in a natural and purpose-built laboratory on individual and group behaviour and choices while predicting and measuring the consequences of those choices.

Facilities

Computer Lab

The computer lab contains 60 networked workstations in which participants can work without being disturbed.

Geographic Information System (GIS) Lab

GIS lab, headed by Prof. Prakash Chandra Dash is well equipped in collecting, Geo-data, geo-referencing and projecting of address data, data visualization and geodesy, GPS and cartography. It has tremendous utility and applications in decisions involving locational data, or data with spatial dimensions and understanding space and time in social behavioural and economic sciences.

Meeting Rooms

Meeting and discussion rooms with well-equipped audio-visual facilities are available that can be customized and arranged depending on the study need. These rooms are designed for research involving group interactions, group decision making, team creativity and team dynamics.

Conference Room

A conference room is equipped with LED screen that can be used for debriefing the respondents or to conduct group exercises.

Scope of work

The following is a non-exhaustive list of the research projects that we can take up. In case you wish for us to take up any other research project please contact us.

Consumer Behaviour Organizational Behaviour Behavioural Economics and Finance Human Resource Management
How consumers think, feel, reason, and select between different alternatives; shopping behaviour, brand choice behaviour, product and pricing studies, communication studies. Group behaviour, group dynamics, group decision making, group problem solving and distributed tasks; leadership studies with particular focus on Strategic behaviour, team performance, leadership, power, and morality etc. Psychological aspects that interfere with decision making. Experiments can be designed to study the evolution of rationality with a particular focus on behavioural finance, investment decisions, and risk studies. Negotiation studies: Risk perception studies in union-management negotiations, bargaining tactics; Worker-employer relations studies; Work-place environmental studies; Power struggle studies.