Research Community News

India Today/Copenhagen Tomorrow is a major Danish/Indian project in the fields of culture and research initiated by the Danish Holck-Larsen Foundation, going on from 18th August 2012 till 13 January 2013. The purpose of India Today/Copenhagen Tomorrow is to link the people of India and Denmark by promoting exchange of culture, science and trade between the two countries. The India Today/Copenhagen Tomorrow project and related activities are supported by more than USD 22 m.
The activities commenced on 18 August 2012 with the opening of a spectacular exhibition of contemporary Indian art at the art museum ARKEN south of Copenhagen. The exhibition is showing 13 of the best artists and artist groups from India. 
Copenhagen University is strongly involved in organising an international workshop entitled ”Spectacle of Globality” on 29 – 30 August 2012, where leading experts on India – anthropologists, political scientists and historians – throw a light on the socio-political processes that contribute to making India a global power. On 5–7 December, another conference focusing on migration and identity, ”Migration, Memory and Place” will be arranged by the University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University in cooperation with ARKEN. 
Other strong elements of the India Today/Copenhagen Tomorrow festival consist of film shows at the film festivals CPH PIX and CPH:DOX; music and dance performances; and literary events with Indian authors Mridula Garg, Githa Hariharan and Manu Joseph. More information.
Finally, the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) will be spending up to DKK 50 million over a number of years on a large-scale collaboration between elite research communities in Denmark and India, through the Danish-Indian Research Collaboration Programme. Indian institutions will provide an equal amount, so that a total of DKK 100 million will be spent on joint Danish-Indian elite research projects. The programme is part of the DNRF’s strategy of focusing on few funding mechanisms and strengthening the internationalization of Danish research. The deadline for submitting a proposal for the Danish-Indian Collaboration Program is November 23, 2012. 
Read more about the impressive India Today/Copenhagen Tomorrow festival.

The 2012 World Water Week in Stockholm was held 26–31 August 2012. The theme being ”Water and Food Security”. As ususal, the 22nd World Water Week is organised by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI). The World Water Week is the leading annual global meeting place for capacity-building, partnership-building and follow-up on the implementation of international processes and programmes in water and development, with large relevance to South Asia. Lakshmi Puri, Deputy Executive Director of UN Women, held a speech on Gender perspectives on water and food security at the Closing Plenary Session on 31 August (photo). 
Full information about the 2012 World Water Week.

Several seminars at the 2012 WWW were of strong South Asia interest, for example a seminar on ”Micro-irrigation and Integrated Food Security Strategies in India, Guatemala, Madagascar”, convened by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and co-organised by Orissa Tribal Empowerment and Livelihood Programme; and a seminar on ”www.agriwaterpedia.info and Open Data Systems for Water and Sanitation”, convened by Akvo Foundation, and co-convened by the India Water Portal. 
One full-day seminar on 28th August was entitled ”Eye on Asia: Food and Water Security”. It was convened by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Finally, the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) convened a seminar on ”Managing the Vulnerable Water-Food Nexus in the Andes and Himalayas”, with input from among others the Kathmandu based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).  
Among many side events during the World Water Week, Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) organized a late afternoon event entitled ”Safeguarding Water Resilience for Food Security in the Anthropocene”. It was co-convened by Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics in Stockholm, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and University of Osnabrück and its Institute for Environmental Systems Research (USF).

The Centre of Global South Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen organised a two day international workshop in collaboration with the National Museum, Copenhagen, focusing on ”Spectacle of Globality”, 29–30 August 2012. The two day workshop brought together a range of cutting edge research on post reform India. The workshop was part of a research programme ‘Nation in Motion’ (2010-2014) funded by the Danish Council of Independent Research (FSE), being the first in a series of four international workshops.
The line-up of participating speakers and session convenors was impressing: 

– Thomas Blom Hansen, Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at Stanford University;
– David Ludden (photo), Professor of Political Economy and Globalization in the Department of History at New York University;
– Esther Fihl, Head of Centre for Comparative Cultural Studies at Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen;
– Uwe Skoda, Chairperson, Contemporary India Study Centre Aarhus (CISCA) at the Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University;
– Anthony D'Costa, A.P. Möller-Mærsk Foundation Professor in Indian Studies and Research Director at the Asia Research Centre, Copenhagen Business School;
– Bengt Karlsson, Head of the Dept. of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University;
– Arild Ruud, Professor of Anthropology, Oslo University;
– William Mazzarella, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago;
– Gopal Guru, Professor of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi;
– Saloni Mathur, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles;
– Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Professor of the Humanities, School of English, University of Leeds;
– Dilip Menon, Mellon Chair of Indian Studies and the Director of the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa;
– Srirupa Roy (photo), Professor and Chair of State and Democracy at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen;
– Frida Hastrup, Postdoc Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen;
– Kajri Jain, Associate Professor of Indian Visual Culture and Contemporary Art in the Department of Visual Studies and the Graduate Departments of Art History and Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada;
– Manuela Ciotti, Assistant Professor in Global Studies at Aarhus University; 
– Aniket Alam, Senior Assistant Editor of the Economic and Political Weekly;
– Ravinder Kaur, Director of Centre for Global South Asian Studies, Department of Cross-cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen; and
– Nicolas Jaoul, CNRS, Paris.

 Full information about the Spectacle of Globality workshop. 

To make Indian doctoral dissertations more accessible, the new Ahmedabad based Shodhganga@INFLIBNET Centre provides a platform for research students to deposit their theses and make them available to the scholarly community in open access. The repository has the ability to capture, index, store, disseminate and preserve ETDs submitted by the researchers. Shodhganga received e-INDIA Jury Choice award for the Year 2011 under Digital Learning category.
The Shodhganga Centre also offers links to other Indian (and World) repositories of ETDs, for example  the digital repository of Theses and Dissertations of Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore; and the Vidyanidhi Digital Library (hosted by the University of Mysore) which is  India's premier Digital library initiative to facilitate the creation, archiving and accessing of doctoral theses.
More information on Shodhganga@INFLIBNET Centre.