SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

---

SASNET visit to Göteborg, Tuesday 13 April 2008

Four weeks after their previous visit to Göteborg (with a India seminar at the School of Business, Economics and Law; and a meeting with researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, more information), Lars Eklund and Sidsel Hansson from SASNET again visited the Swedish west coast metropolis on Tuesday 13 May 2008.

The reason behind the new visit was to strenghten the SASNET network by meeting researchers involved in South Asia related research at different faculties of Göteborg University, to inform them about SASNET and its activities/possibilities.
We had several fruitful meetings during the day, first at Sahlgrenska Academy, and then at the School of Global Studies at Göteborg University (SGSGU).

Visit to Section of Social Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy

We had a meeting with Dr. Gunilla Krantz, PhD in Public Health sciences, who informed us about two major South Asia related research projects going on within the department, one on ”Domestic Violence against Women”, and the other is about ”Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health”. Dr. Krantz also has some work at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Division of International health (IHCAR), at Karolinska Institutet Medical University in Stockholm, and supervises two university teachers from the Aga Khan University (AKU) in Karachi, Pakistan, involved in a Sandwich PhD programme.
In order to increase the exchange of teachers and students between AKU and Swedish institutions, Gunilla Krantz in 2007 applied for an Institutional Grant from STINT, the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, and on 12 April 2007, STINT decided to award such a grant in support of long-term collaboration between Swedish and foreign research groups to this project. It was one out of 17 projects that were given Institutional grants from STINT.
SEK 600 000 was awarded in support of establishing research collaboration with the School of Nursing (AKU-SON) and the Department of Community Health Sciences (CHS) at AKU. The main responsible persons from the Department of Community Health are Senior Instructor Dr. Syed Farid ul-Hasnain (MD, MSc in Epidemiology, faculty and Principal investigator on adolescent sexual and reproductive health project, and from from AKU-SON, Assistant professor Tazeen Saeed Ali (nurse, midwife with MSc in Epidemiology; Principal investigator on a project on ‘Violence against women’). Read the full application (as a pdf-file)
On the Swedish side, the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine in Göteborg will collaborate with IHCAR at Karolinska Institutet. The ambition is that teachers from AKU will be given an opportunity to participate in seminars, lectures and courses in the field of Social Medicine in Göteborg from 2008. Göteborg University’s Institute of Biomedicine runs a three-year programme in Public Health Science. Within the framework of this programme, the ambition is to establish a formal collaboration with AKU on student exchange and possibilities for field studies.

Visit to Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Sahlgrenska Academy

We proceeded from Hälsovetarbacken house No. 7 through corridors, up five floors by elevator and finally via a glazed-in footbridge over to Göteborg University’s medical departments located on the so-called Medicinarberget. There we had an appointment to meet Prof. Ann-Marie Svennerholm at the Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Biomedicine.
She presented the ongoing South Asia related research that is carried out within the department, and about plans to establish a Centre for Global Health at Sahlgrenska Academy.

For more than 30 years, the department has carried out world-leading research in the field of mucosal immunobiology and vaccine development. Professor Jan Holmgren has carried out research on cholera for more than 30 years, and Prof. Svennerholm and several colleagues at the department are working on projects related to infection and immunity studies of ETEC and Helicobacter pylori bacteria. Since many yaers, an important collaboration partner has been the ICDDR,B – Centre for Health and Population Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Several of the researchers are also connected to the Mucosal Immunobiology and Vaccine Center (MIVAC) at Göteborg University, a strategic research center that in 2005 was granted five years financial support from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. To provide better resources and a clearer identity for its vaccine research, Göteborg University has also, with financial support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation, established a specific vaccine research institute, GUVAX – Gothenburg University Vaccine Research Centre.

Other meetings at Sahlgrenska Academy

We were also supposed to meet Dr. Joakim Larsson and his colleagues at the Endocrinology Division, Dept. of Physiology, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, but unfortunately the meeting had to be cancelled. Dr. Larsson leads a research group that focuses on various aspects of environmental effects of pharmaceuticals. During the period 2006–2007, the group worked on a project titled ”Studies of the effluent toxicity from the Patancheru Enviro-Tech Ltd plant in Hyderabad, India to direct further actions including possible mitigations”. The project was funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Sida, and it aimed at investigating toxicities of effluents from Indian pharmaceutical industries in the Hyderabad region. More information.

Instead we met Annelie Hyllner, International Coordinator at Sahlgrenska Academy, since she handles the administration around the existing Linnaeus-Palme International Exchange Programme between the Göteborg University and the Tribhuvan University in Nepal, for students at the Medical doctors training programme. The collaboration project with Nepal was initiated by Professor Göran Bondjers, former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine (he is now Vice Chancellor for the Nordic School of Public Health, also in Göteborg). Every year faculty and a couple of students go from Göteborg to Nepal, and Nepalese students come to Göteborg. More information about the exchange programme.

Meeting at school of Global Studies

In the afternoon, a meeting had been organised by Dr. Camilla Orjuela (photo to the right), Division of Peace and Development Research (PADRIGU) at School of Global Studies (SGSGU). She is also a member of SASNET’s board. The meeting was held in a seminar room at SGSGU, and we were given a chance to present SASNET and its website to an audience consisting of researchers from different divisions within the School of Global Studies, as well as a few researchers coming from other departments from the faculty of Humanities at Göteborg University.

The participants to the meeting were:
• Dr. Camilla Orjuela, PADRIGU
• Dr. Marie Thynell, PADRIGU
• PhD Candidate Dhammika Herath, PADRIGU
• PhD Candidate Shanta Wanninayake, PADRIGU
• Dr. Satish Chandra, Dept. of conservation
• Dr. Eva Rosén Hockersmith, Dept. of Religious Studies and Theology & Museion
• Lecturer Jan Johansson, Division of Social Anthropology, School of Global Studies
• PhD candidate Susanne Åsman, Division of Social Anthropology, School of Global Studies
• PhD candidate Anna Laine, Division of Social Anthropology, School of Global Studies
• Adam Brenthel, Dept. of History of Ideas and Theory of Science

Marie Thynell	Anna Laine	Susanne Åsman	Eva Rosén-Hockersmith	Satish Chandra	Dhammika Herath	Jan Johansson	Adam Brenthel