SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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School of Education, Culture and Communication, Mälardalen University, Campus Västerås:

Postal address: Akademin för utbildning, kultur och kommunikation, Mälardalens Högskola, Box 883, SE-721 23 Västerås, Sweden
Visiting address: Högskoleplan 2, Gåsmyrevreten, Västerås
Fax: +46 (0)21 10 15 60
Web page: http://www.mdh.se/ukk

Contact person: Dr. Diane Pecorari, phone: +46 (0)21 151702. Personal web page.

Research and other activities connected to South Asia:

Professor Emeritus Anders Törnvall retired from Mälardalen University in 2006 (and settled in Linköping). He was Professor of Intercultural Communicationat Mälardalen University, but was also connected with the Dept of Management and Economics at Linköping University. He was engaged in research on Asia, mostly Japan and China. At Mälardalen University he was in charge of several courses on Asia and Asia related issues in the last years, and he was also involved with SWETECH, Swedish Technology in Foreign Countries, a supplementary postgraduate programme for MSc students interested in international marketing as well as for engineers actively working in Swedish International companies.
Prof. Törnvall was also busy networking, promoting the establishment of a Center for Asian European Studies and Research – CAESAR – a collaborative project between the Dept of Humanities at Mälardalen University, the Dept of Management and Economics at Linköping University, the Dept for International Business, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University, and the Center for Pacific Asia Studies (CPAS) at Stockholm University.
South Asia was part of the perspective in Törnvall’s research on ”Religions in Asia and its consequenses for human rights and the development of democracy in Asia”. He presented a paper on this subject at the International Conference of Asian Scholars in Berlin, Germany in August 2002, in which he compared the development in a number of different Asian countries; India, Thailand, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Taiwan, China and South Korea. Anders Törnvall also did research on Asian business culture, and women’s situation in Asia. In 2002 he organized a series of seminars at Mälardalen University in Västerås on Internationalization and business cultures in different countries of Asia.

Dr. Diane Pecorari is a Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of English at the School of Education, Culture and Communication. In August 2008, Diane Pecorari received a SASNET guest lecturer grant to invite Dr. Ashis Sengupta (photo to the right) from the University of North Bengal in India to give a number of guest lectures at Mälardalen University in March 2009. The invitation was extended to include guest lectures also at the Dept. of Humanities, Växjö University, and at the School of Arts and Languages, Högskolan Dalarna.
At Mälardalen University, he gives two guest lectures based on his research in Indian drama, both on Thursday 26 March. In the morning, from 10.15–11.45 he will lecture about ”Contemporary Indian Drama”. In this talk he will present a view of Indian drama that is inextricably connected with various performing art forms practiced in India almost as a way of life down the ages. Venue: Milos hall.
In the second lecture, also on 26 March, 15.15–16.45, he will lecture about ”Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Indian English Drama”, where he discusses four plays under the headlines “Body Blows,” “Women and the Inquisition, ”Gender Trouble” and “Destabilizing Sexual Identity”. By using these concepts he wants to show how contemporary Indian drama, written in/translated into English, addresses the issues of gender and sexuality from multiple perspectives. Venue: Room T3-065 (Västerås). All are welcome to the seminars. More information.