• More information about South Asia related research at Swedish and Nordic universities

During the period 2001-2010, no less than 23 662 South Asian students studied at Swedish universities. The number is based on official statistical data regarding all foreign students studying at Swedish universities provided by the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education (Högskoleverket). SASNET has made an excerpt presenting the number of students from the South Asian nations. Pakistan tops our list with more than 11 000 students – 47% of all South Asian students in Sweden during the 10 year period 2001-10, whereas India contributed with 33% and Bangladesh with 18%. Smaller number of students came from Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. More information.

On 22 November 2011, the India-EU Study Centres Programme (IESCP) will have a final conference in New Delhi, where outcomes and achievements gained during its 43 months of existence will be presented. IESCP was set up by the European Commission in 2008 as an integral part of the India-EU Joint Action Plan adopted in 2005. Its aim was to promote a better understanding of the EU in India and vice versa through academic and other forms of collaboration, and its chief objective both to strengthen existing study centres and establish new ones focusing on EU studies in India as well as on contemporary Indian studies in Europe. More information about IESCP. At the New Delhi conference will also be discussed how networking could be continued among the universities involved once the IESCP programme is over. See the tentative conference programme.

• Eleven South Asian students to graduate from World Maritime University

The World Maritime University (WMU) in Malmö, Sweden operates under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations. WMU thus enjoys the status, privileges and immunities of a UN institution in Sweden.
Among the faculty, several are South Asian professors, and among the students that pass through the WMU MSc programme every year, a good number also come from South Asia.
In the class of 2011, consisting of 168 students from 46 countries, four come from India, three from Bangladesh, two from Maldives, and one each from Pakistan and Sri Lanka. On Sunday 4 December 2011, they will celebrate their Graduation ceremony at the Concert Hall in Malmö. SASNET will be represented at this festive ceremony by deputy director Lars Eklund. More information about the World Maritime University.

The Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) in Islamabad, Pakistan invites papers for the first annual Colloquium on ”Public Action in Pakistan: Vacillating between Apathy and Anger” to be held 27–28 November 2011. The Colloquium is first in the series of annual multi-disciplinary colloquia which will allow different social sciences perspectives leverage and enrich each other. Beyond its scholarly goals, the organisers hope that the Colloquium would inform the debates on public policy and development agenda in Pakistan. I-SAPS is inviting scholars in local as well as international academia to discuss the difficulties in dealing with social change especially in developing and Muslim societies like Pakistan from multi-disciplinary aspects, with special reference to individual’s personal behavior and its relation to societal changes. More information.

An international conference entitled ”Nonstate Actors in the Transition Period in Monsoon Asia, 1760-1840” will be held in Taipei, Taiwan, 28–30 November 2011. It is organised by the Center for Asia Pacific Area Studies (CAPAS) at Academia Sinica, Taipei, in collaboration with National Tsing Hua University, Beijing, China; Leiden University, the Netherlands;  and Seinan Gakuin University, Fukuoka, Japan.
The conference focuses on the non-state actors and their relationship with states in Monsoon Asia in the period of 1760-1840, in an attempt to overcome the previous studies, which have tended either to write the histories of British, Dutch, or Spanish imperialism, or to construct a national history of each present-day independent state separately. An examination of the roles of non-state actors will show the cross-bordering dynamism of history.
Some of the papers to be presented focus on South Asia, among them a paper on ”Class conflict in the eve of the early colonial encounter: A study into the continuities and discontinuities of the class relations in the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries in Sri Lanka” by Nirmal Dewasiri, Colombo University; a paper on ”Piracy and State-Formation on the South-West Coast of India in the Eighteenth Century” by Binu John Mailaparambil, Bielefeld University, Germany; and a paper on ”Indigenous Response to Western Science: Knowledge and Learning in Northern India (1750-1850)” by Anjana Singh, London School of Economics, UK. More information.

The Indus Foundation, a non-profit making educational organization dedicated to the promotion of higher education in India, organises the third annual Indo-Global Education Summit in New Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai, India, 4–12 December 2011. The Summit 2011 will have sessions on collaborative research programs, joint undergraduate and graduate programs, twinning & transfer programs, distance education programs, faculty & student exchange programs, study abroad in India programs, and other academic partnerships. The major fields covered would be Engineering & IT, Business & Management, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Natural Sciences, Arts & Humanities, and Social Sciences. There will be one-on-one meetings between representatives of Indian institutions and those of foreign universities. for forging academic collaborations. The Summit 2011 is specifically designed for university vice-chancellors, presidents, provosts, deans, enrollment / recruitment officers, and their executive-level team members. Early registration is strongly suggested. More information about the Indo-Global Education Summit 2011.

• Protecting Minority Rights in South Asia conference at EU Parliament in Brussels

The Hague based Global Human Rights Defence organisation (GHRD) holds a Protecting Minority Rights in South Asia conference at the EU Parliament in Brussels on Thursday 8 December 2011. It is organised in collaboration with Cecilia Wikström, Member of Parliament representing the Swedish Liberal Party, and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Committee of the European Parliament.
Key speakers are Taslima Nasreen (photo), Bangladeshi writer in exile, and winner of the European Parliament Sakharov Prize; and Anuradha Koirala, awarded CNN hero 2010 for her work against human trafficking in Nepal.
The event, in celebration of International Human Rights Day, brings together representatives of human rights defenve organisations from Pakistan (Human Rights Focus Pakistan – HRFP, and Women Assists Women Pakistan); India (Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry); Bangladesh (Bangladesh Minority Watch); and Bhutan (Bhutanese Advocacy Forum), to address European representatives, MEPs, policymakers and NGOs.
SASNET’s deputy director Lars Eklund will participate in the conference.

The Contemporary India Study Centre Aarhus (CISCA), and the Dept. of History and Area Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark host a set of two workshops on Visual Cultures in Contemporary India, in collaboration with Sri Venkateswara College at Delhi University in India. The first workshop will be held at Aarhus University on 8–9 December 2011, while the second one will be located at Sri Venkateswara College a month later, 8–9 January 2012.

The first workshop is reserved for a broader mapping of this multi-facetted and dynamic field with its diverse traditions and innovative potential in India and South Asia. Thus, the workshop focuses on the development of various media, but also on the motives, strategies and approaches of the producers as well as consumers – exploring visual cultures in relation to themes such as nationalism; gender, family and kin; urban and rural images, religion or diaspora and transnational flows. See the full program.

SASNET Deputy Director, Lars Eklund, and assistant webmaster Julia Velkova will attend the workshops. Full information about the CISCA workshops.

The 11th Asian Urbanization International Conference will be held in Hyderabad, India, 10 – 13 December 2011. It is being hosted by the Dept. of Geography at Osmania University, in association with The Asian Urban Research Association (AURA). AURA was established in January 1986 and is housed in the University of Akron, Ohio, USA. It is a non profit and private research organization whose primary purpose is to promote the study of urbanization, urban growth and to organize Asian Urbanization Conferences. The first Asian Urbanization Conference was held at the University of Akron in 1985. The conferences are biennial (held every other/alternate year) and have resulted in many publications. More information.

An International Conference on Climate Change & Social Issues (CCSI2011) will be held 14-15 December 2011 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is organized by the Institute of Human Development and Training Sri Lanka (IHDT) in collaboration with Toulouse Business School, France, and hosted by the Munasinghe Institute for Development (MIND) in Colombo.
The keynote speaker is Prof. Mohan Munasinghe, who shared the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace, as Vice Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Currently, he is Chairman of MIND; Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Manchester, UK; Distinguished Guest Professor at Peking University, China; and Honorary Senior Advisor to the Sri Lanka Government. More information.

The fifth International Seminar and Workshop on Fermented Foods Health Status and Social Wellbeing will be organised by SASNET – Fermented Foods at the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) in Mysore, India on 15th and 16th of December 2011. SASNET Fermented Foods is a forum for scientists of the south Asian countries, Sweden and other countries for exchanging information in the field of food fermentation and its practical application. It was launched in 2003 by Prof. Baboo Nair, Division of Applied Nutrition and Food Chemistry, Lund University. The organising secretary is Dr. G. Vijayalekshmi, Deputy Director, Food Microbiology Department, CFTRI. More information about SASNET Fermented Foods. Full information about the 2011 workshop.

An interdisciplinary conference on “Cultural Transformations: Development Initiatives and Social Movements” will be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 17 – 18 December 2011. The conference is organised by the Dept. of English and Humanities and BRAC Development Institute at BRAC University and will aim at gathering local and international academics and practitioners to problematise the idea of Asia. The organisers will provide for the accommodation of the conferencec participants. More information. 

The 14th International Forum on Contemporary Theory will be held in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India 18-21 December 2011. The main topic this year is ”Transcending Disciplinary Decadence” and will aim at exploring challenges in front of the social sciences, humanities and scholarship in these fields today, from the perspectives of globalisation, market considerations and neoliberal university policies, as well as the so called ”colonialisation” of knowledge. Keynote speaker opening the conference will be the renowned Prof. Arjun Appadurai from New York University. The traditional special plenary session on a regional text will this year be dedicated to the famous modern Hindi-Urdu modernist Munshi Premchand’s and his novel Godan (1936), known in English as ”The Gift of a Cow”. More information.

The 24th Kerala Science Congress is scheduled from 29th to 31st January 2012 at the Rubber Research Institute in  Kottayam. It will be jointly organisd by the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment (KSCSTE) – the umbrella organization of the research establishments in the State – and the Rubber Board.

Realising the critical role of Science and Technology in socio-economic development, Kerala has made substantial efforts to strengthen its science base through a number of research and development initiatives. In almost every key sector, whether it is agriculture, forestry, fisheries, industry, transport, environment, energy, material sciences, there are top class institutions undertaking research relevant to the needs of the State. Every sphere of science as well as the different phases of research – basic, strategic, applied and adaptive – are being addressed by the Universities and the R&D institutions in the State. Being a state with high population density and limited natural resources, wise use of the resources and building up human skills are essential. The 24th Kerala Science Congress will have a number of sessions for providing an opportunity for intense interaction and knowledge sharing. Particular thrust will be given to encourage young researchers through Young Scientist Awards and Children’s Science Congress. More information about the 24th Kerala Science Congress.

The University of Western Australia in Crawley organises a symposium on the local politics of global economic and ecological fragility on 2–3 February 2012. The symposium is entitled ”India And The Age Of Crisis”. The purpose of this symposium is to consider how politics in India are likely to be shaped by global economic and ecological crises.

Confirmed presenters are:
– Palagummi Sainath (photo), popularly known is India’s most highly-awarded journalist with over 40 international and national awards for his investigative and social sector reporting in a career spanning three decades. He is currently the Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu – a 133-year-old daily with a circulation of over 1.6 million.
– Swapna Banerjee-Guha, Professor of Development Studies in the School of Social Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. From 1981 to 2006 she was the Professor of Human Geography at the University of Mumbai. – Anjal Prakash, Senior Fellow and Director – Peri Urban Water Security Project at South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies – SaciWATERs, Hyderabad, India.
Deadline for submission of abstract is 1 December 2011. The organisers seek contributions that address one or more of the following sub-themes on the intersections between global crisis and the specificity of politics and society in India: – Historical perspectives on crisis; – Crisis and Governance; – Economy and Crisis; – Labour and crisis; – Crisis and society; and – Business and Crisis.
A selection of papers from the symposium will be published in a special issue of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies in 2013. More information (as a pdf-file)

An International Seminar on Contemporary Sri Lankan Fiction in English will be held in Guwahati, India, 23 – 25 February 2012. It is organised by the Dept. of English at  Gauhati University, in collaboration with the university’s Institute of Distance and Open Learning. They are organizing a series of International Seminars on Contemporary South Asian Fiction, considering the fact that this is an emerging area in English Studies today. In the first of the series the focus will be on Sri Lanka, while subsequent seminars will focus on Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and so on.
The seminar seeks to define a more nuanced and sensitive critical framework that actively reclaims marginalized voices and draws upon recent studies in migration and the diaspora to reconfigure the Sri Lankan critical terrain.
Some of the leading Sri Lankan writers  Nihal de Silva, Michael Ondaatje (photo), Romesh Gunasekera, Shyam Selvadurai, A. Sivanandan, Jean Arasanayagam, Carl Muller, James Goonewardene and Punyakante Wijenaike  rigorously challenge the theoretical, cultural and political assumptions that pit insider against outsider, resident against migrant and the authentic against the alien.
Abstracts should be submitted before 31 December 2011. More information.

A conference on ”India and the European Union in a Changing World: Perceptions and Perspectives” is being organised by  the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)’s Jean Monnet Chair and Centre for European Studies and will be held at JNU, Delhi on 1-2 March 2012.
The conference is multidisciplinary and open for students, academics, and practitioners, who will debate the relevance and impact of relations between the EU and India since the first summit in 2000 at the bilateral, regional and global levels. The main themes are: – The European Union and South Asia; – India-EU Strategic Partnership; – Economic and Trade Relations; – Indian FDI in Europe/European FDI in India; – India-EU Free Trade Agreement; – India, EU and Global Governance, Multilateralism; – Multiculturalism and Identity in India and Europe; – Environment, Climate Change and Energy Security; – EU and Conflict Resolution in South Asia; – India and the EU: Perceptions and Misperceptions.
Abstracts should be submitted by 23 December 2011. More information.

The South Asia Center at Syracuse University (SU) has issued a call for papers for its annual SU-Cornell South Asia Consortium Conference 2012. The conference will be held at Syracuse 29–30 March 2012 and the theme of the conference is ”Health, Nutrition, and Agriculture in South Asia: Contemporary Issues and Future Directions”.

The purpose of this conference is to create an open, creative environment for academic researchers andapplied practitioners (in the social and biological sciences) working on topics related to health, food studies and agriculture in South Asia to share insights and experiences across disciplines to stimulate new collaborative ideas for research and practice. The conference incorporates traditional elements (didactic sharing) with innovative experiences involving South Asian food and creative networking strategies to stimulate new thinking. Deadline for abstract submission is January 15, 2012. Full information.

The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth (ASA) will hold its 2012 conference in New Delhi on 3-6 April 2012. The theme for the conference will be ”Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world”. Every five years or so, ASA tries to hold its annual conference outside the UK, in a Commonwealth country. The aim is to widen the possiblities for participation by Commonwealth colleagues, and so the 2012 conference will be hosted for the first time in India – at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Art and aesthetics will be explored from various angles and perspectives, among which the impact of globalisation on the creation and movement of contemporary artworks, changing skills of artists, art and new religions, and more. Ecological conservation and narratives are also among the topics of exploration.
Among interesting panels at the ASA 2012 conference, one will be convened by Tereza Kuldova, PhD Fellow at the Department of Ethnography, Museum of Cultural History, Oslo, Norway. The panel is entitled ”Exploring the Aesthetics and Meanings of Contemporary Indian Fashion: From Craft to Catwalk”. More information.
 Associate Professor Paolo Favero (photo) from the Lisbon University Institute, but previously at the Dept. of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, co-organises another panel on the role of contemporary digital practices in offering new forms of representation of/in India. The panel is named ”Screening India through digital image-making”. More information about this panel. Eswarappa Kasi from the National Institute of Rural Development in Hyderabad, India, and Smita Yadav, University of Sussex, UK, co-convene a panel entitled ”Narratives of coping with marginalization: impact of state policies on natural resources and tribal lives”. More information.

The 10th International Conference on South Asian Languages and Literatures (ICOSAL 10) will be held in Moscow, Russia, on 5–6 July 2012. It is organised by the Department of Indian Philology, Institute of Asian and African Studies (IAAS), Moscow State University, and the International Centre for South Asian Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities.
Out of the nine previous ICOSALs, three were organized in Moscow by the Department of Indian Philology, IAAS, (July 1997, July 2003, June 2006). The other six ICOSALs were organized by various Indian Universities (in Hyderabad, Aligarh, Patiala and other Indian cities).
Deadline for submission of abstracts is 1 February 2012.  More information.

The 22nd European Conference on South Asian Studies (ECSAS) will be held 25-28 July 2012 at the University Institute of Lisbon (also known as ISCTE-IUL) in Portugal. A full list of the 51 accepted panels is now available –go for the list.  Some panels are still accepting online paper proposals, and it states if this is the case, underneath the panel abstracts.

The biannual ECSAS conference is the largest gathering of South Asia oriented researchers in Europe, covering all fields from the humanities and social sciences to technology, natural sciences and medicine. The conference is held biannually under the aegis of the European Association of South Asian Studies (EASAS), a professional, non-profit organisation of scholars engaged in research and teaching concerning South Asia with regard to all periods and fields of study. (SASNET organised the 18th ECMSAS conference in Lund in 2004.)

The 2012 conference convener is Professor Rosa Maria Perez, anthropologist, Department of Anthropology, ISCTE-IUL and researcher of CRIA-IUL. The co-convener is Professor Diogo Ramada Curto, Historian, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Registration will be by online form only, and this will not be posted until early in 2012. Please note: You must join the European Association of South Asian Studies in order to be able to attend the conference.
The venue will be ISCTE-IUL:s campus at Avenida das Forças Armadas in Lisbon.
Full information on the conference page.

On 1 June 2011 the Swedish government approved a decision to open an Honorary Consulate of Sweden in Thimphu, Bhutan. The new consul is Ms. Phub Zam, leading Bhutanese business woman in the building sector. She is managing director for the Yarkay Group, engaged in water power projects and many other business fields.
The honorary was handed over to Phub Zam by a counsellor with the Swedish embassy in New Delhi, Lena Weden – see photo – on 18th August 2011 (more information). The establishment is to promote the already existing friendship between Sweden and Bhutan from the 80s, Lena Weden said.
– It would facilitate Sweden officials coming in and Bhutanese wishing to visit Sweden, she said. It is aimed at promoting trade relations as well.
Contact information for the new consulate.