Archaeologies of the water-land of Bangladesh as critique of established historical narratives
Speaker: Prof. Swadhin Sen, archaeologist and Professor, Department of Archaeology, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka

Chair: Prof. Nayanjot Lahiri, Professor of History, Ashoka University

Historical narratives of South Asia, even when they assert variabilities and contexts, tend to take some concepts, and standards for granted. Despite the debates and discussions on spatio-temporal heterogeneity, a ‘pan-Indian’ bias is explicit in the history of this region, especially in the period identified as the domain of historical archaeology (post c. sixth century BCE). Present Bangladesh, in these narratives, is predominantly a periphery or frontier on the east. The assumption is that the history of this frontier zone must inevitably be addressed in reference to a core or a centre. This lecture attempts to unsettle this established perception with some recent archaeological studies on a territory in which the separation between the land and water could be misleading and fatal. 

(Collaboration: Ashoka University)

Speaker: Sonam Wangchuk, engineer, teacher and environmentalist. Recipient of the Magsaysay Award in 2018, The Terra Award 2016 for the World’s Best Earth Buildings, Lyon, France; and UNESCO Chair for Earth Architecture for India, 2014 among others

22nd BCF Annual lecture

(Collaboration: Business and Community Foundation)
 

Wandering Singer: Vignettes from the Poetry and Life of Sarojini Naidu

Poetry readings by Sunit Tandon, well known theatre and film personality, and Director, India Habitat Centre

(Organised by IIC-International Research Division)

Release of the IIC Quarterly Winter 2022 – Spring 2023 Special Issue

Edited by K. Srinath Reddy and Omita Goyal

To be released by Dr. Karan Singh, Chairman, IIC Editorial Board

Followed by panel discussion

panellists: 

Dr. Atul Kotwal

Dr. Sandhya Venkateswaran

Prof. Rajib Dasgupta

Prof. K. Srinath Reddy

People’s health is the best investment India can make as we move towards our future. This statement lies at the crux of all the contributions in this volume. The government has introduced programmes and policies for the development of the health sector; however, the majority still have unequal access to health facilities. This volume attempts to untangle the complexities in our public health system  by examining several  challenges such as tuberculosis, non-communicable diseases, mental health disorders, road traffic accidents, and importantly, financing, among others. 

China and the Emergence of a Global Small Hydropower Network, ca 1980s

Speaker: Dr. Arunabh Ghosh, Associate Professor, Department of History, Harvard University. A historian of modern China, his interests include social and economic history, history of science and statecraft, environmental history, and transnational history. Ghosh is the author of Making it Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the Early People’s Republic of China (Princeton, 2020)

Chair: Shri Shyam Saran, President, IIC

This talk explores China’s role in emerging global small hydropower networks of the late 1970s and 1980s. Starting early in the decade, Chinese small hydropower expertise and technology traveled across the Global South, and even made its way to the United States. China also came to play an increasingly central role in a host of ambitious international hydropower conferences – in places like Kathmandu, Nairobi, and Hangzhou. The talk will trace and contextualize this story, unpacking in the process how Chinese expertise was exported abroad and how it came to serve as a benchmark for global small hydropower projects

First lecture in a new bi-monthly series focusing on contemporary China

(Collaboration: Centre for Chinese Studies, Ashoka University; and NYU Shanghai)
 

Who are These People?

by Leena Nandan 

About the book:

Every year, hundreds of young enthusiasts join the Civil Services of India--the over-ambitious, the go-getters, the underdogs, the indifferent and the heroes. They are all here in this action-packed thriller, described with a deft hand and a witty bent of mind. Experiencing the romances, the sacrifices, the action and the monotony, the prizes and the perils, even as a sinister plan to attack the nation unfolds.  To get to know Who Are These People, the book unveils various contours of a civil servant.

Speakers:

Sh. Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa ;  Former Chief Executive Officer, Niti Aayog (Chair)
Ms. Gauri Singh, Deputy Director-General, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) 

Sh. Shiv Murari Sahai, IPS (Retd.)
Sh. Jagmohan Gupta, Advisor, National Mission for Clean Ganga
Ms. Leena Nandan, Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change, GoI & Author of the book

A Conversation with Ms Purnima Rai, former President, Delhi Crafts Council; Dr. Simmi Bhagat, Associate Professor at Department of Fabric and Apparel Science Lady Irwin College of the University of Delhi; and Ms Smita Singh, Independent Textile Conservation Consultant

Moderator: Dr. Ritu Sethi, Founder-Trustee, Craft Revival Trust and Editor, Global InCH

The panel of experts will discuss the what, why and ways of preserving treasured textile objects
 

The Writer-Critic and Literary Studies

A two-day symposium presented by the Centre for the Creative and the Critical, organised in collaboration with Ashoka University

Detailed break up of the symposium:

Speakers include Vidyan Ravinthiran, Associate Professor of English Literature, Harvard University; and author of two collections of verse; Jane Goldman, poet and academic, Reader, School of Critical Studies, Glasgow University, and founding General Editor, Cambridge University Press Edition of Virginia Woolf's works; Sumana Roy, author of How I Became a Tree, a work of nonfiction, Missing: A Novel, My Mother’s Lover and Other Stories, and Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing, Ashoka University; Ashutosh Bharadwaj, writer of various forms of prose, from conflict reporting and investigative journalism to fiction & literary criticism; Rosinka Chaudhuri, Professor of Cultural Studies and Director, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, writer and poet; Martin Crowley, Professor of Modern French Thought and Culture, University of Cambridge; Rita Kothari, Professor of English and Director, Centre for Translation, Ashoka University; Michel Chaouli, teaches literature and philosophy at Indiana University Bloomington; author of Thinking With Kant’s Critique of Judgment (Harvard University Press, 2017); Amit Chaudhuri, novelist, poet, essayist, and musician; Professor of Creative Writing and Director, Centre for the Creative and the Critical, Ashoka University. He conceptualises the 'literary activism' symposia; Lisa Borst, web editor of n+1 magazine; and Matthew Beaumont, Professor of English Literature, University College London, and author of several books, including Nightwalking (2015) and The Walker (2020).

Ancient Itinerants and Medieval Rulers in Bandhavgarh’s Forests

Illustrated lecture by Prof. Nayanjot Lahiri, Professor of History, Ashoka University

Chair: Prof. Upinder Singh

Forests and wilderness rarely figure in the archaeology of historical India, except in passing when expanding agricultural tracts are described in relation to forest lands or in accounts of trade routes. This has meant that large expanses of forests and wild places that carry early markers of human use – a lot of which originates from urban spaces and political capitals – have not featured in such research. Prof. Lahiri’s presentation will show that urban folk did not just live in cities and towns but helped create as also inhabit dwellings in forests, through the field work conducted by her and other collaborators in the Bandhavgarh National Park and Tiger Reserve

Second lecture in a new series of bi-monthly lectures organised in collaboration with Ashoka University

Inner Harmony: Living in Balance

By Jon Kolkin (Teneues: Bilingual edition, 2021)

The author Dr. Jon Kolkin, Medical Volunteer, photographer, musician, Integrative Medicine Coach, accomplished athlete and President, Shades of Compassion Foundation will be in Conversation with Shri Rajiv Mehrotra, author, filmmaker and Managing Trustee, Foundation of HH The Dalai Lama