Research Community News

A new Foundation for Applied Political Science of South Asia (APSA), has been conceptualised and created by the members of the Department of Political Science at the Heidelberg University in Germany. APSA aims at promoting scientific research on the South Asian region and seeks to achieve its goals by supporting scholarly work and providing assistance and networks for researchers, while at the same time aiming at raising understanding and awareness for politics and political processes in South Asia. By supporting academics and individual research, APSA not only wants to contribute to the scientific community, but also seeks to provide  easily accessible insights into the subcontinent for the general public, the media, and the economy. More information.

A three day International Conference on “Religion & Globalization: A Changing Perspective” was held in Kolkata, India, 29 November – 1 December 2012. It was being organised by the Centre for the Study of Religion and Society (CSRS), a unique endeavor of the Dept. of Sociology at Jadavpur University established in 2011 (in collaboration with Swedish researchers at the universities of Gothenburg and Uppsala), the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, Universty of Gothenburg; and the Forum for South Asian Studies, Uppsala University.
SASNET’s deputy director Lars Eklund also participated in the conference for the inauguration. The conference convenor was Dr. Ruby Sain, CSRS chairperson.

Conference convener Ruby Sain with Chittaranjan Adhikary, Banaras Hindu University (BHU), and Federico d’Agostino, University of Rome.

Åke Sander and Clemens Cavallin.

The keynote addresses were delivered by Prof. Åke Sander, University of Gothenburg, who talked about ”Religion and Society: A Global Perspective”; and by Dr. Clemens Cavallin, also from Gothenburg, who talked about ”The Concept of Religion and the Foundation of Religious Studies”.
The conference took its point of departure from the coming 150 years anniversary celebration of Swami Vivekananda’s speech at the World Parliament of Religion in Chicago in 1893. The Chicago speech became a landmark in the relations between Indic religions and the West. Vivekananda succeeded in creating a platform for interaction between India and the West that opened up the way for others to follow. His venture was based on particular philosophical, intellectual and social audience. The conference invited papers and critical reflections about this and similar processes of religious globalization within a colonial, postcolonial and postmodern context. See the full programme for the conference.

On November 16, 2012, Gunnel Cederlöf, newly installed Professor at the Department of History, Uppsala University, gave an inaugural lecture on the theme "On Time and Space: To Control an Empire with a Map", about the British Lieutenant Robert Boileau Pemberton's use and creation of maps over South Asian in the 19th century. Watch the lecture here (in Swedish).
Professor Cederlöf's work spans the environmental, legal and colonial history of early modern and modern India and the British Empire. It focuses on questions of the formation of governance and subject rights at the time when the British Empire formed in Asia. More specifically it enquires into the role of commerce, law and property, and the enabling and constraining conditions of climate and ecology. She has also taken an interest in the history of mission from the perspective of Indian social and economic history.
Professor Cederlöf chairs the Forum for South Asia Studies at Uppsala University and coordinates the Uppsala University and Calcutta University student and teacher exchange programme.

Tatjana Kuhn, Masters student in International and European Relations at the Dept. of Management and Engineering, Division of Political Science, Linköping University, has written her masters thesis on the International Science Programme’s (ISP) collaboration support to Chemistry and Physics in Bangladesh. The thesis from 2012 is entitled ”The International Science Programme in Bangladesh: A case of Self-interest, Interconnectedness or Social Empowerment?”, and is available on the Net. Go for the thesis.
International Science Programme was established in 1961 – in 2011 it celebrated its 50 years anniversary – see photo. The purpose of the ISP is to contribute to the development of active and sustainable environments for higher education and scientific research in developing countries, within the basic sciences chemistry, mathematics, and physics, with the objective to increase the production and use of results relevant for the fight against poverty by researchers in the basic sciences in developing countries. ISP provides long‐term support to Research Groups and Scientific Networks. The work is carried out in close cooperation with research groups at more advanced host institutions. In Asia, ISP previously was much engaged in Sri Lanka, but since a few years back the initiatives focus only on Bangladesh, Cambodia and Laos. 
In 2011, Sida funding was used to support 31 Research Groups in 7 African and 3 Asian countries; out of which three were in Bangladesh. A research group at the Department of Chemistry, University of Dhaka was supported to work in the field of environmental and food contamination chemistry. Research collaboration between Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), and the Atomic Energy Centre, Dhaka, was supported in the field of magnetic materials. Finally, a first year of support to medical physics was provided to a group at the Department of Biomedical Physics & Technology, University of Dhaka.
ISP also supported a number of scientific conferences and seminars in Bangladesh, including the International Science Seminar on the occasion of Diamond Jubilee Celebration of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh in October 2011.
Go for the ISP Annual Report 2011.