On Thursday, 23 February at 11.30, SASNET's director Anna Lindberg will lecture on a seminar organised by Jawaharlal Nehru University in Dehli. The topic of her talk is "Class, Caste, and Gender Relations: Female Workers in Kerala 1930 - 2010". The seminar is organised by the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, part of the School of Social Sciences.
All are welcome!
Venue: CSSS Committee Room, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU, New Delhi, India
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| Meeting at the Centre for Eastern Languages and Cultures, from left to right: Roumiana Damianova, Milena Bratoeva, Bubu Eklund, Lars Eklund, Aleksandar Bogdanov, Boryana Kamova, Julia Velkova and Andronika Martonova. |
On Friday 10 February 2012, SASNET's deputy director Lars Eklund, and assistant webmaster Julia Velkova were on an official visit to the University of Sofia in Bulgaria. Their goal was to explore ongoing research on South Asia in the university, as well as possibilities for future collaboration. They primarily visited the Centre for Eastern Languages and Cultures, which is part of the university’s Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology. It has a number of programmes at bachelors and masters level related to Indian studies, and also some research in the areas of Indian Philosophy and Literature. Since many years, the Centre hosts an Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) professor, who is a Professor of Hindi from India on a rotating basis with a term of 3 years.
A meeting was organised by Associate Professor Milena Bratoeva, Head of Classical East Department, with a number of scholars, academic staff and PhD candidates working on South Asian projects in Sofia. Bubu Munshi Eklund from Lund also participated in the meeting.
Lars and Julia then visited the International Relations office at the University of Sofia, to discuss current collaboration projects between the University of Sofia and Swedish universities with the Head of International Relations, Mr. Rumen Grigorov, and the Erasmus/Socrates operative administrator, Mr.Tsvetan Bogdanov.
Read the full report from University of Sofia.
On 8 February 2012, Lars Eklund and Julia Velkova from SASNET visited Malmö University for the second time in a short period, to again meet people involved in South Asia related activities. This time they visited the Faculty of Education and Society, and the Faculty of Odontology.
First they went to the Department of Science, Environment, Society at the Faculty of Education and Society (lärarutbildningen), located in a modern building, Orkanen, with a grand view over Malmö harbour.
Here they met Inge-Marie Svensson (photo), a Lecturer in charge of an optional 15 ECTS credits course, ”Möte med U-land” (Encounter a developing country), that has been offered for teachers training students at Malmö University since 1993. The course focuses on India and is open for all fifth semester students. The students, normally 18 each year but only 9 last year, spend three weeks in the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where they do field studies according to individual choice. Due to curriculum reasons, the course planned for September 2012 may however be the last one.
More information on the course, and about the South Asia related research that has been carried out within the department.
Julia and Lars then took the train for their next destination, the Faculty of Odontology (Tandläkarhögskolan), located just a stone’s throw away from Station Triangeln in central Malmö.
Here they met Dr. Jayanthi Ramanathan Stjernswärd (photo), one of the Directors for the Centre for Oral Health Sciences. She informed about the Centre, that has had an international touch ever since it started in the 1940s. The Centre took an early interest in the dental health problems of the Third World, which made the Centre attractive to the World Health Organization. As a result, the Centre attained the status of a WHO Collaborating Centre for Education, Training & Research in Oral Health in 1987 – one out of 19 such centres worldwide.
Since 2006, the main task of the Collaborating Centre has been to compile and manage a database about oral health and the dental status in all the member countries of the United Nations. Known as the WHO Oral Health Country/Area Profile Project (acronym CAPP), this extensive database with lot of valuable material also on South Asia, is available on the Internet.
Dr. Jayanthi Stjernswärd also informed about the Centre’s ongoing educational collaboration with South Asia. Dental students have to produce a research paper at the end of their programme, and every year a number of students choose South Asia related research project works, that include a fieldwork stay in the region for a period of 2-3 weeks. Dr. Stjernswärd has assisted several students over the years to go to Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and India.
More information about the Centre for Oral Health Sciences and the WHO Collaborating Centre.
On 16 February 2012, the first SASNET Brown Bag lunch seminar for the spring semester 2012 was successfully held. It was also the first seminar organised in collaboration with Arbetarnas Bildningsförbund (ABF) Lund, and Lunds Konsthall, and quite a large crowd of people, both academic and non-academic, turned up at the wonderful public art gallery (Lunds Konsthall) in central Lund, to listen to Professor Emeritus Neelambar Hatti from the Department of Economic History, Lund University. He lectured on the ongoing gendercide, as he calls it, and deteriorating sex ratio figures in India, with the provocative title ”Where have all the girls gone?”. More information about Prof. Hatti’s lecture.
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| Kristina Myrvold, Magnus Larsson and Mariam Meynert. | |||
SASNET organises Brown Bag lunch seminars since 2011, but from the spring 2012 in a new format, in collaboration with ABF, Sweden’s largest adult liberal education association, and the municipal art gallery of Lund (Konsthallen). As usual, lectures are given by eminent Lund University researchers working on South Asia related projects, and are held once a month on Thursdays. Coming seminars are held on 15 March (Kristina Myrvold), 19 April (Magnus Larsson), and 9 May 2012 (Mariam Meynert). Venue: Konsthallen, Mårtenstorget 3, Lund.
More about previous and coming SASNET Brown Bag seminars.
Programme for the spring 2012 (as a pdf-file)
On Tuesday 14 February 2012, Sheba Saeed, PhD candidate in History, Film and Television at the University of Birmingham, UK, visited SASNET’s office in Lund to meet deputy director Lars Eklund. Sheba, a solicitor by profession, is a guest researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Copenhagen, during the month of February 2012. Her PhD research project focuses on the begging phenomenon in Mumbai, India, using criminological theory. A topic quite similar to her previous MPhil thesis project on Beggars of Lahore, which resulted in a documentary film as part of an audio-visual dissertation. This film, “Beggars of Lahore” (more information about the film), has been screened at international conferences and film festivals, and Ms. Saeed has also made a successful Beggars of Lahore photo exhibition, first shown in 2009.
Sheba Saeed had been invited to visit Lund University by Teres Hjärpe, international co-ordinator at the School of Social Work, and she accompanied Sheba to SASNET. The School of Social Work is currently expanding its South Asia oriented activities and SASNET is actively promoting this development.
(Teres Hjärpe and Sheba Saeed on photo)
More information about Sheba Saeed and her projects on her personal web page.
After a kick-off meeting in Lund that took place on 18 October 2011 (more information about this meeting), a second meeting was organised to discuss the creation of a Swedish masters program on South Asian studies. This time, the meeting took place at the Faculty of Arts in the University of Gothenburg in which Åke Sander, Clemens Cavallin and Sigridur Beck from the University of Gothenburg hosted the meeting. SASNET, who initiated the discussion about developing such a program in Sweden, was represented by its director, Anna Lindberg and its assistant webmaster, Julia Velkova. Kristina Miolin from the Division of External Relations, Lund University was also specially invited to share her expertise on the practical and administrative issues related to setting up a Masters program between several Swedish universities.
Other participants in the meeting were Per-Olof Fjällsby from the Department of History at Karlstad University, and Ferdinando Sardella, coordinator of the Forum for South Asian studies at Uppsala University.
After an intensive discussion there was made a preliminary draft of courses to be offered as part of the program. Important part of the discussion was also the structure and formal implementation of such a Masters program. The discussions will now continue online and it will be worked on developing a joint description and argumentation of the program.
Dr. Mohsin Saeed Khan from Lahore, Pakistan, held a SASNET lecture on ”Selling sex without HIV – Pakistan’s HIV Epidemic” on Monday 6 February 2012, 13.15–15.00. The seminar was organised in collaboration with the Division of Social Medicine and Global Health, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University in Malmö. Venue: Auditorium, Clinical Research Centre (CRC), Skåne University Hospital in Malmö (SUS Malmö). On photo along with Lars Eklund, SASNET, and Professor P-O Östergren, Head of Division of Social Medicine and Global Health.
Dr. Khan defended his doctoral dissertation entitled ”Poverty of Opportunity for Women Selling Sex in Lahore, Pakistan: Knowledge, Experiences and Magnitude of HIV and STIs” in 2011 at the Division of Global health (IHCAR), Karolinska Institutet (KI), Stockholm. More information.
In the seminar, Dr. Khan pointed out that the national prevalence of HIV in Pakistan is less than 1%. The HIV epidemic is concentrated among Injecting Drug Users (37%), and Hijras (Transvestities – 7.3%), meaning that the epidemic is concentrated among males. Has Pakistan been able to avert a heterosexual HIV epidemic? Is it a game of demand and supply or typologies of most at risk populations? The government of Pakistan has not financed the HIV programme since 2010. The contributions by global financing institutions have also decreased. Only 10% of the health care providers know how to correctly diagnose and treat STIs including Gonorrhoea and Syphilis. The hidden face of risky behaviours, denial, financial instability, global politics and security – have they contributed to the HIV epidemic in Pakistan. See the conference poster.
The audience consisted to a large extent of students and teachers from the Master's Programme in Public Health (MPH), run at the Division of Social Medicine and Global Health. This programme partly focuses on South Asia, and many of the students are from that area (Pakistani second-year students, Muhammad Ahsin, and Hafiz M Tayyab on photo to the left).
During his visit to Lund University, Dr. Khan also visited SASNET’s office in Lund, since he has had a special relation to SASNET. Till 2010, he was associated with SASNET as a member of its advisory South Asian Reference Group (more information).
Ishtiaq Ahmed, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, and Honorary Senior Fellow of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, held an interesting and highly appreciated SASNET lecture entitled ”The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First Person Accounts” about the 1947 Partition of Punjab, on Thursday 2 February 2012. Professor Catarina Kinnvall, Dept of Political Science, Lund University, acted as a brilliant discussant at the seminar.
The lecture was based on Ishtiaq Ahmed’s recent book on the tragic events during and after Partition in the two Punjabs, a book that will get worldwide publication in February 2012 by Oxford University Press. In his lecture, Prof. Ahmed shedded light on how and why the Punjab, a Muslim majority province of British India with large Hindu and Sikh minorities, was partitioned in 1947. Read more about the seminar.
The Embassy of India at Stockholm hosted a reception at the Elite Palace Hotel, Stockholm on 27 January 2012 to celebrate the 63rd Republic Day of India (which is actually the 26th of January). A large crowd consisting of people from politics, business, diplomacy and academics gathered to hear speeches by the Ambassador, Mr. Ashok Sajjanhar, and also by the chief guest, Ms Hanna Hellquist, Secretary of State in the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She spoke warmly and enthusiastically about the positive developments in relations between India and Sweden in the last few years and the huge potential for their growth in the coming years. A Jugalbandi in Kathak by Sunita Singh and in Odissi by Annette Pooja was also presented which was highly enjoyed and appreciated by the audience.
Lars Eklund represented SASNET at the event, which offered a good opportunity to meet network colleagues from Stockholm University, Karolinska Institutet, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Uppsala University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and others.
See Lars’ photos from the Republic Day event.
At its root node office in Lund, SASNET has an impressive library collection of South Asia related doctoral theses from universities in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, in most cases from 1996 and onwards, but with some older dissertation theses as well. Right now, the collection consists of 162 theses, covering most disciplines, from technology and medicine to humanities and social sciences.
Go for SASNET’s catalogue of its theses collection.
More detailed information on Nordic South Asia doctoral dissertations during the past 15 years is also available through SASNET.
Go for the dissertations presentation page.
