Research Community News

Dr. Sirajul Islam from Örebro University School of Business has been conferred the ‘Börje Langefors second best doctoral dissertation award’ (or Börje Langeforspriset in Swedish) from the Swedish Academy of Information Systems for his 2011 doctoral dissertation entitled ”Creating opportunity by connecting the unconnected: mobile phone based agriculture market information service for farmers in Bangladesh”. The thesis focuses primarily on mobile phones and how they can be used as part of an Agriculture Market Information Service (AMIS) in order to provide crucial information to farmers in Bangladesh.
The award was conferred on May 9, 2012 in a befitting manner during the annual conference of the Academy hosted by Linköping University. Börje Langefors Award is a prestigious academic honour awarded each year by SISA for the best doctoral dissertation in Sweden in the study areas Informatics, Information systems, Data and Information Science, or equivalent. The prize aims to reward as well as encourage development of high standard research in Sweden, and to demonstrate exemplary research in informatics.  More information.

During 2012, the South Asia Institute (SAI) at Heidelberg University, Germany, celebrates its 50th anniversary. All through the year, SAI organizes and presents – both in Heidelberg and in South Asia – single events, symposia and workshops, plus a central week of celebration in May, a lecture series with renowned researchers invited, and special programmes on single topics and countries of South Asia. This is all done under the heading: The South Asia Institute: 50 Years of Looking Ahead.
For the May celebration week, Prof. Sheldon Pollock, Arvind Raghunathan Professor of South Asian Studies at Columbia University, New York, was invited to hold a gala lecture on Tuesday 8th May. He talked about ”What is South Asian Knowledge Good For?”. This is followed by an Alumni evening on May 11th to which the alumni of the South Asia Institute – visiting scholars, former staff members, graduates – have been invited.
More information about the SAI 50th Anniversary celebrations.

Syeda Shahanara Begum from the Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg will defend her doctoral dissertation entitled ”About Child Poverty – A Bangladesh’s Perspective” on Friday 1 June 2012, at 09.15. The faculty opponent is Professor Tapio Salonen, Malmö University. Venue: Hörsal Sappören, Dept. of Social Work, Sprängkullsgatan 25, Gothenburg. 
Taking child poverty into account as an enormous concern on the pathway to human development, the thesis aims to examine child poverty’s extent and characteristics in Bangladesh, poor children’s views on this issue and their policy recommendation to reduce it. It also discusses how child poverty differ between Bangladesh and China, what are the reasons for the differences in child poverty over time between the two countries, and which measures are needed to reduce child poverty in Bangladesh according to its principal victims.
The results show that Bangladesh’s children make up the greater share of the population, where almost half of the poor are children. Child poverty plays a vital role in the prolongation of developing, expanding, extending and transmitting poverty on to successive generations. Participants recommended a combination of policies to enhance the capability of poor children and their caregivers. Policy interventions need to give further attention to a reduction of parental poverty and income inequality, sustained economic growth, ensured access to education and health care, exposure of corruption and hidden costs of these services, and an elimination of mistrust of the recipients to speed up the extent of child poverty’s reduction in Bangladesh. More information.

The Swedish Development Research Network on Nature, Poverty and Power (DevNet), based at Uppsala University, invites  to a one-day symposium entitled ”Democracy and Development: A Disputable Pair” on Thursday 31 May 2012, 10–17. The symposium marks the probable closure of DevNet (at least in its present shape), since its funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) has come to an end. It will therefore be dedicated to a retrospective as well as forward looking discussion on the central concepts of democracy, (sustainable) development, globalisation and power. Venue: Hambergssalen, Geocentrum, Villavägen 16, Uppsala University. Participants should register before May 28th to DevNet@csduppsala.uu.se.
The symposium addresses the meanings and realities of democracy and development and their linkages to globalisation and power. What meanings are assigned to these concepts? How do they connect? Such difficult questions and possible answers will be illuminated and debated by experienced and concerned scholars of various generations and backgrounds. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Neera Chandhoke, University of Delhi, India, who will speak about ”Globalisation and Democracy: An Equivocal Relationship”. Other invited speakers include Dr. Beppe Karlsson, Dept. of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University; Dr. Seema Arora-Jonsson, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala; Professor Lars Rudebeck, DevNet, Uppsala University; and Professor Olle Törnquist, University of Oslo.
In his presentation, Lars Rudebeck (photo) will sum up his thinking on the symposium theme after half a century of research, teaching and efforts to support transdisciplinarity in the field of development studies. He was one of the founders of the interdisciplinary Uppsala-Stockholm arena called the AKUT Group (Working Group for the Study of Development Strategies) based at Uppsala University, 1976-1993, as well as the subsequent Seminar for Development Studies (SDS), which in 2008 was transformed into the nation-wide research network DevNet. The continuous aim of these and related constellations has been to promote interdisciplinary exchange in the field of ‘development studies’, and Lars Rudebeck has been one of the central figures in making this possible. Thus, the present symposium is also a tribute to this life-long effort of his.
More information about the DevNet symposium.