Prof. Ishwar Modi (1940) is the founding fathers of leisure studies in India. He is presently the Director, India International Institute of Social Sciences and a former member of the Executive Committee of ISA and was also President of ISA Research Committee on sociology of Leisure (2006-2010 – 2014). Presently he is its Acting President and Secretary. At the time of his retirement in 2000 he was the Founder Director of the Centre for Leisure and Tourism Studies, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. He later served as a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Health Management Research. As a pioneer of leisure studies in India, he was the Founder President of the Indian Leisure Studies Association. Associated with ISA RC 13 since 1986, he organized its mid-term conference in India in 1989. He also continuously remained on the Board of Directors of the World Leisure & Recreation Association (now World Leisure Organization) all through the 90’s and was the Organizing Secretary of its 3rd World Leisure Congress in India at Jaipur. He was honored by WLO with its Honorary Life Membership in USA in 1996. He is also a Senior Fellow and Founding Member of the World Leisure Academy. His authored, coauthored and edited books include Leisure, Mass Media and Social Structure (1985), Emerging Trends in Indian Sociology (1986), Drugs: Addiction and Prevention (1997), Human Values and Social Change (2000), Aging and Human Development (2001), Themes in Social Stratification and Mobility (2009), Leisure and Civilization: Interdisciplinary and International Perspectives(2010), four volumes of Modernization, Globalization and Social Transformation (2012-2015), Mapping Leisure across Borders (2013), ten volumes of Reading in Indian Sociology (2014), and few other books and several articles.

Prof. Modi has also organized the conference of the Research Committee of International Tourism of the International Sociological Association in India at Jaipur (2008), and also that of the ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Health (Jaipur, 2009). Prof. Modi was also the Chairperson of the ISA RC 13 at its mid-term conferences in Beijing, China (2009), Palermo, Italy (2011), and Szeged, Hungary (2013). He was also the Program Coordinator of the RC 13 Conferences at the First ISA Forum of Sociology in Barcelona, Spain (2008), Second ISA Forum in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2012), and at the forthcoming Third ISA Forum in Vienna, Austria (2016). He also Chaired and Coordinated the ISA Congress RC 13 Sessions at the ISA World Congress of Sociology in Gothenburg, Sweden (2010) and at the ISA Yokohama Congress in Japan (2014).