The Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University invites applications for a full time Assistant Professorship in Modern South Asian Culture. The Assistant Professor will combine Humanities and Social Science perspectives on culture, to engage popular and ‘high’-cultural production in film, literature, theater, art, music, and (new) media, with reference to cultural identities (ethnicity, gender, language, social organization), and to social, political, economic, and religious contexts. The appointment is for a fixed period of three years starting from September 2012 and ending in August 2015, with the possibility of extensions of up to three years, and of tenure thereafter. Requirements include a PhD degree. Applications by candidates near completion of the PhD will also be considered. Review of applications will start on 1 March 2012 and continue until the position is filled. Interviews are scheduled for April and May 2012. Full information.

In August 2010, the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests released its final report on ”Securing the Future of Elephants in India”, a result of the work of the so called Elephant Task Force. The major problem identified by the group is not the extinction of the species, but the disappearance of the habitat and terrestrial areas inhabited by elephants, which needed further protection. To tackle this problem, the task force proposes the creation of a new National Elephant Conservation Authority (NECA) on the lines of the structure for tiger conservation.
There will also be appointed a new Consortium of Elephant Research and Estimation (CERE) that will develop and apply scientific methods for enumeration of the elephant populations. A new terrestrial division will also be made at state level, defining the so called Elephant Landscapes which will cover the existing plus 32 Elephant reserves. While new reserves will not be created, existing territories with elephant habitats will be combined into such. Among the other measures that will be taken is to declare the elephant as a National Heritage Animal with the hope to highlight its ecological sensitivity, along with recognizing officially its central role in the Indian tradition and culture. Read the full report. 

The Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” part of Heidelberg University has opened the application round for its Summer School on “Seeing Matter(s): Materiality and Visuality” to take place at the Karl Jaspers Centre from 29 July to 4 August 2012. The course aims at exploring the role of visual and material culture in the context of transcultural exchange processes between Asia and Europe. Among the questions addressed by the Summer School will be – How can we move “beyond representation,” to take on images in all their tangibility and material presence?; – Is “thing theory” a site for us to analyze the confluence of materiality and visuality?; – How can we look at images and objects differently when we approach them from transdisciplinary and transcultural perspectives?; In what ways do such perspectives challenge concepts and methods of our own disciplines?. The aim of the course is to ultimately provide stimulating discussions and new inspiration for graduate and junior research work, to exchange ideas and test methods from individual research projects and to actively engage with an international group of peers and senior scholars who share an interest in transcultural visuality and materiality.
Application deadline is 15 April 2012. Full information about the course.

Harvard University Summer School introduces a new summer course entitled ”Interpreting South Asian Women’s Lives”. This 4 credits summer course is offered by the Department Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University and is scheduled for 25 June to 10 August 2012. The course is given as evening classes on campus at Harvard University, with seminars twice a week, Monday and Wednesday from 18.30 to 21.30. The course contextualizes four ethnographies written by and about women and set in South Asia. Specifically, it will be structured around the following three themes: – the researchers’ interpretations of women’s assertions of identity and agency in everyday interactions and expressive genres; – questions that these interpretations raise and dialogues in which they engage subjects and researchers; – the studies’ contributions to understanding social life, and to developing disciplines on which the research draws.
The ethnographies selected exemplify a perspective that views culture as emergent, rather than essentialized, and that locates aspects of identity and agency in shifting, multiply voiced practices. Together, the ethnographies span nearly two decades of work by scholars who have made rich and significant contributions to ethnography by researching among others songs, personal narratives, love letters, therapeutic performances in an urban healing room, multi-sited poetics, politics, and more. Students from all disciplines are welcome, application is currently open at www.summer.harvard.edu. Prospective students are welcome to email the instructor Maggie Ronkin.

Yale University Center for British Art organises a conference on ”Art, Agency, Empire: India in Global Contexts” is held on 11 February 2012 in Connecticut, United States. The conference aims to gather graduate students and to work with asserting the existence of multiple forms of agency in India (artistic, cultural, political) from about 1600 to Independence and beyond. It will also focus on visual and cultural exchanges between India and the rest of the world, with a reference to the colonial period.
See here the full call for papers.

The 40th World Congress of International Institute of Sociology (IIS) is held at New Delhi, India 16–19 February 2012. The theme of the conference is ”After Western Hegemony: Social Science and its Publics”. It is jointly sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala. The main organisers are Rajeev Bhargava, Director of CSDS and Björn Wittrock, Principal of the SCAS and President of the IIS. More information about the Delhi conference.
Among the many panels to be convened at the 40th World Congress, could be mentioned a panel on ”Social Change as the Story of Contemporary Indian Society and Social Scientists as the Story Tellers”, convened by Sailaja Nandigama and Eswarappa Kasi from Wageningen University, Netherlands, and University of Hyderabad, India. More information.

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.
More information.

The 5th International Conference on Science and Mathematics Education in Developing Countries will be held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1–3 March 2012. It is hosted by Zaman University, Phnom Penh. Science and mathematics play vital roles in developing the economy, interacting with the environment wisely and providing for public health and services. These subjects are also essential to making informed personal, social and political decisions. When taken together science and mathematics can be used ethically to improve the human condition in a sustainable manner.
The International programme committee behind the conference include Dr. Peter Sundin, International Science Programme (IPS), Uppsala University; and Dr. Om Prakash Niraula from Tribhuvan University, Nepal.
More information.

The 2012 AAS (American Association for Asian Studies) Annual Meeting will be held 15–18 March 2012 in Toronto, Canada. Founded in 1941, AAS is a scholarly, non-political, non-profit professional association open to all persons interested in Asia. It seeks through publications, meetings, and seminars to facilitate contact and an exchange of information among scholars to increase their understanding of East, South, and Southeast Asia. It counts among its members scholars, business people, diplomats, journalists, and interested lay persons. Full information.

The 37th Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions will be held at Merton College, the University of Oxford, UK, on 23–25 March 2012. The Spalding Symposium is an annual conference bringing together scholars from many disciplines who are working in the general areas of Indic Studies. This year the organisers encourage papers relating to ecology and related matters, such as animals; however, they will also consider papers on other themes. The symposia are funded by the Spalding Trust. It is expected that a selection of papers from the Symposium will be published in our peer-reviewed journal, Religions of South Asia (RoSA). More information about the Symposium.

An International Conference on ”Population Dynamics and Sustainable Resource Development” will be held in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India, 25–27 March 2012. It is being organized by Dept. of Geography at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), and aims to form a platform to discuss and debate about population dynamism and sustainable resource development. Sub-themes include – Population Dynamics. Fertility, mortality, migration; – Modern Innovation in agriculture and Changing Land Use Pattern; – Human Resources, Health and Hygiene; and – Remote Sensing and GIS Application in Resource Development, Management and Planning. Abstracts should be submitted before 28 February.
Моre information about the Aligarh conference.

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. Full information.

The Heritage Seminar at the University of Gothenburg hosts a conference entitled ”The Re/theorisation of Heritage Studies” 5–8 June 2012. It is organised in collaboration with Association of Critical Heritage Studies, a newly formed international network of scholars and researchers working in the broad and interdisciplinary field of heritage and museum studies. Its primary aim is to promote heritage as an area of critical enquiry. To this end, the Association works to promote dialogue and networking between researchers from different fields and disciplinary backgrounds and between researchers, practitioners and activists. The Association’s web pages are currently hosted by the Australian National University.
The Gothenburg conference will be the official launch of the Association. Bosse Lagerqvist at the Dept. of Conservation, University of Gothenburg, is the main contact person for the conference. Deadline for submitting abstracts was 31 January 2012. More information.

”From Myrdal to Lindh” is an interesting book about Swedish women Ambassadors and Ministers for Foreign Affairs, pioneers in a field earlier completely dominated by men, published in 2010. As late as 2001 a similar book was published with the title ”Swedish Diplomatic Profiles during the 20th Century”, all of them being men.
Gabriele Winai Ström who worked as a diplomat in the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Sweden then reacted, and decided to write an alternative book presenting a selection of prominent women who have influenced the Swedish foreign policy, among them Alva Myrdal (photo) – in 1955 the first woman appointed to be Sweden’s Ambassador to India. A very successful appointment indeed, since she had already worked as a high UN official in New York and Paris, and was acquainted to the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. During her period in Delhi from 1955 till 1960 she became engaged on behalf of Sweden in crucial policies like disarmament, decolonization and the organisation of non-aligned nations.
The book deals with the conditions of the 15 women, heading embassies and the ministry of foreign affairs, including Anna Lindh, popular Minister of Foreign Affairs, but tragically assasinated in 2003. Already translated into other Nordic languages, the interest has been expressed to translate the book also into French and English to reach a wider audience.
On Monday 6 February 2012, the Swedish Embassy in New Delhi organised a literary function, where the book was presented by Gabriele Winai Ström, and Kaj Fölster, daughter of Alva Myrdal.

In 2010, the Swedish writer Jan Myrdal (son of Nobel laureates Alva and Gunnar Myrdal) travelled in the tribal heartland of Bastar at an age of 83, and personally interacted with the tribal people and the leadership of CPI (Maoist). The visit resulted in a book, the English version of which will be released with the title ”Red Star Over India”, at the Kolkata Book Fair on 28 February 2012. Myrdal was a central figure in the European protest movement against the Vietnam War, has penned more than 80 books, among which are ”Report from a Chinese Village”, ”The Silk Road” and ”India Waits”. He has written fiction, plays and books on literature, art, politics, besides being a prominent supporter of the civil liberties movements in various countries. He has also made a number of feature films and TV documentaries.
While in India, Jan Myrdal was invited to be the main speaker at a meeting held in Delhi on 6 February, giving a talk on ”The War on People in India”. The meeting was organised by the Forum Against War on People.
More information.

On Monday, 6 February 2012, the Society of International Affairs in Gothenburg (Utrikespolitiska föreningen) and its new branch of activity called Cinema Politica Gothenburg organised a cultural evening with focus on Afghanistan. During this evening it was screened ”A Dream for Kabul”, a film by Canadian director Philippe Baylaucq. The film is about Haruhiro Shiratori who lost his only son in the World Trade Center attacks. But instead of isolating himself in grief, he decides to visit Afghanistan – to make contact with ordinary people in an attempt to end the cycle of violence. Over four years and across three continents, filmmaker Philippe Baylaucq accompanies this Japanese Don Quixote, documenting his quest to build a cultural centre for the children of Kabul. The film charts his parallel efforts – to advance a humanist project that is beset with problems while seeking reconciliation with his dead son. Read more and see the trailer at Cinema Politica’s website.

In September 2010, an edited colume entitled ”Economic Cooperation and Infrastructural Linkages between Two Punjabs: Way Ahead” was published by the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development in Chandigarh, India. The book seeks to  explore the possibility and benefits of resumption of natural and historical development processes between two Punjabs (East which is part of India, and West that is part of Pakistan) looking closer at the possibility of infrastructure linkages between the two regions. It presents a study that claims that closer cooperation between the two regions around infrastructure would bring benefits on account of low prices of directly imported goods and economy in transport via live rail links reducing shipping charges, transshipment costs, storage cost, etc. The book focuses on six areas, within which infrastructure linkages between the two Punjabs can be explored, namely energy; extension services and marketing in agriculture; transport, communication and logistics; credit and banking infrastructure; health sector; and education.
The authors contributing with articles are Sucha Singh Gill (on photo), Ranjit Singh Ghuman, Inderjeet Singh, Lakhwinder Singh, Sukhwinder Singh, and Jaswinder Singh Brar. Professor Sucha Singh Gill is one of the foremost social scientists in India when it comes to the analysis of agricultural transformation and rural change with a specialization on Punjab and Northwest Indian agriculture. He  was a guest scholar at the Dept. of Sociology at Lund University in 2006.
More information about the book.
Read more about Prof Sucha Gill. 

In the end of 2008, the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Bangladesh published a book on ”Addressing Regional Inequality Issues in Bangladesh Public Expenditure” written by C S Mahmoud, S N Wadood, and K S Ahmed. The book examines the relation between government spending and citizen well-being in Bangladesh by looking at various districts of the country and comparing the urban areas with the rural. The main queston investigated by the authors is whether politically-motivated government policies have contributed to an increased inequality in Bangladesh in which some areas (mainly the capital, Dhaka) have a decrease in poverty among the citizens, while in other areas poverty has on the contrary increased.
The data used as a basis for the book are the Planning Commission’s Annual Development Plans (ADPs) from 1995/96 to 2005/06, supplemented by household and income data. The book looks at district-wise ADP allocations in Rural Development and Institutions (RDI), road transport, health, polulation and family welfare and education and religious affairs to find that on average, spending in all sectors tends to be concentrated in Dhaka and districts with relatively higher per capita incomes.
Read the complete book online here.