The Arab Spring that Was and Wasn’t 

By K.P. Fabian (ICWA & Macmillan Education, New Delhi: 2022)

Discussants: Amb. T.C. A. Raghavan, former diplomat and Director General, Indian Council for World Affairs; Amb. Talmiz Ahmad, former diplomat, Visiting Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation and author; and Amb. K.P. Fabian, author of the book

Chair: Prof. Gulshan Dietl
 

Panelists: Amb. Rajiv Bhatia, Distinguished Fellow, Foreign Studies Programme at Gateway House and former Indian Ambassador to Myanmar and Mexico and High Commissioner to Kenya, South Africa and Lesotho; Shri Kallol Bhattacharjee, Senior Assistant Editor, The Hindu; and Mr. Jaffarullah, Co-Founder, Rohingya Human Rights Initiative

Chair: Amb. K.P. Fabian, Distinguished Fellow, Symbiosis University and former diplomat

Discussion on the World Health Organisation report

Panelists: Prof. R. Srinivasa Murthy, former Professor and Head, Psychiatry, NIMHANS, Bengaluru and Chief Editor, World Health Report, 2001; Prof. B.N. Gangadhar, former Professor, Head & Director, NIMHANS, Bengaluru, and Board of Governors, NMC; Prof. Pratima Murthy, Professor, Head & Director, NIMHANS, Bengaluru; Prof. Atul Ambekar, Professor of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi and Advisory Panel on Drug Dependence: WHO, Geneva, Strategic Advisory Group, UN; and Dr. Koushik Sinha Deb, Additional Professor, Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, Digital Psychiatry, mHealth and eHealth; and Dr. Andrea Bruni, advisor, Mental Health, SERO, WHO, New Delhi

Moderator: Dr. Sudhir Khandelwal, Senior Consultant in Psychiatry, Holy Family Hospital, New Delhi and formerly Head, Dept. of Psychiatry and Chief, National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi

The World Health Report 2022 is an important document on the status of mental health in the world, disability caused by mental illnesses and substance and alcohol abuse, governmental and public response etc. 

Speaker: Shri Ritesh Taksande, Faculty Member, Centre for Open Learning, Film & Television Institute of India, Pune

Chair: Suhas Borker, Convener, Jan Prasar and Editor, Citizens First TV (CFTV)

The rapidly changing technology poses serious challenges to the way we live our daily lives…The impact of the smartphone on how we consume news has been mind boggling. Not only can we receive instant updates, read news stories and articles, and watch video on the go – as a story unfolds in real time, mobile journalism has also ‘disrupted’ the way news is produced and reported. In the post smartphone scenario, with virtually all tools of newsgathering in their pockets, millions of reporters have popped up all over the world while fake news, misinformation and planted distortions are putting the basic journalistic standards of truth, ethics, integrity and accuracy under threat.

(Collaboration: Jan Prasar)

Temple as Custodians of Cultural Heritage in the Context of Braj

Illustrated lecture by Sushant Bharati, Conservation Architect and Researcher based in Delhi. He is currently working on a research project based on the temple architecture of Braj

Chair: Shri B.M. Pande

Braj region is the celebrated cultural landscape associated with Lord Krishna. The region is marked by many temples which have carefully preserved various traditional arts, crafts, music, etc. in the form of devotional practices for many centuries, which are offered to the deities throughout the year. The lecture will focus on such practices which are safeguarding the local cultural heritage of the region

Speaker: Tony Joseph, journalist, former Editor, BusinessWorld and author of the best-selling book Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestor and Where we Came From

Chair: Ganesh Devy, Literary critic, activist and Chairperson, People’s Linguistic Survey of India

In the last few years, our understanding of how the world got peopled in prehistory has changed significantly, thanks mostly to recent advances in the discipline of Population Genetics. All large population groups, we know now, are the result of multiple migrations that lasted centuries and, in some cases millennia, in the ancient past, each of them driven by historical forces. This context is crucial to understanding how four large, prehistoric migrations contributed to shaping Indian demography as it is today.

(Organised by IIC-International Research Division)
 

Coordinator: Ms Anu Jindal
 
Waking up to Disordered Sleep

Speaker: Dr. Vivek Nangia, Principal Director and Head, Institute of Respiratory, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine, Max Hospital, New Delhi
 
Moderator: Ms Anu Jindal
 
While we have known about the science of sleep since time immemorial, most research in modern medicine with regards to our sleep has occurred only in the last 3-4 decades. Although an individual spends nearly one-third of his/her time sleeping, very little attention is paid to monitoring sleeping patterns. With increasing obesity, sedentary lifestyle and abnormal timings of sleeping, sleep disorders are becoming more and more common. The number of hours that is required in sleeping, what timings to follow and what impact these have on our lives need to be understood. Dr. Vivek Nangia will address some of these issues and highlight how a good sleep can transform our health

How Archaeology is Helping Improve Climate Models: A View from South Asia

Illustrated talk by Prof. Kathleen D. Morrison, Professor of Anthropology & Department Chair, University of Pennsylvania

and Curator for South Asia, University of Pennsylvania Museum

Chair: Dr. M. Nambirajan, Joint Director General, Archaeological Survey of India

Unfilled Barrels: India’s Oil Story

By Richa Mishra (Bloomsbury India, New Delhi: 2022)

Discussants: Shri Sunjoy Joshi, Chairman, Observer Research Foundation; Shri Raghuvir Srinivasan, Editor, Business Line; and Ms Richa Mishra, Bureau Chief, Hyderabad & Kolkata, BusinessLine & Author of the Book

Chair: Shri Amitabh Kant, former CEO, Niti Aayog
 

West Asia at War: Repression, Resistance and Great Power Games
By Talmiz Ahmad (HarperCollins India: 2022)

Moderator: Amb. K P Fabian, Distinguished Fellow, Symbiosis University 

Speakers : Sh. Atul Aneja, Editor, India Narrative.com ; Dr. Meena Singh Roy, Head, Eurasia & West Asia Centre, Tillotoma  Foundation ; Amb. Talmiz Ahmad, Ram Sathe Chair for International Studies, Symbiosis, Pune & Author of the Book