SWEDISH
SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK
Newsletter 75:
20
June 2007
| Educational News |
| Conferences and workshops |
| South Asia related Culture |
| New and updated information |
• 20
applications for 2007 SASNET grants
20 applications were received for the
2007 round of SASNET Planning Grants. Last date for applications was
15 June 2007. Out
of the 20 applications, 11 refer to networking for new research programmes/projects,
and three to networking for new educational projects. Another four
applications refer to Interdisciplinary Workshop Grants (for organising
a South Asia related research workshop in Sweden or in South Asia);
and finally two applications refer to the Guest Lecture Programme (for
inviting a guest lecturer from South Asia, to give lectures at more
than one Swedish university). The applications will then be screened
by a reference group consisting of three eminent Nordic South Asia
scholars, and final decisions be taken by the SASNET board on its next
meeting Tuesday 28 August 2007. Total amount to distribute will be
SEK 885 000. Decisions will be taken on 28 August 2007. More
information.
• New
Counsellor for Science and Technology in New Delhi visited SASNET
Dr.
Stefan Jonsson from the Swedish
Institute for Growth Policy Studies
(ITPS) visited SASNET’s
root node office in Lund on Tuesday 19 June 2007. From the middle of
August 2007, Stefan Jonsson (photo to the right),
will be based at the Swedish Embassy in New Delhi, working as Counsellor
for Science and Technology. He has a background in Economics from the Centre
for Research on Innovation and Industrial Dynamics (CIND), Uppsala
University and most recently at Stockholm
School of Economics. In the early 1990s he was working for some
years with the Swedish Sida supported Social Forestry project carried
out in the Indian state of Orissa. His mission for ITPS consists to
a large extent in establishing contacts within the fields of research
and science, and that was the reason for his visit to Lund to meet
SASNET’s Director, Prof. Staffan Lindberg, and its Deputy Director
Lars Eklund. While in Lund he also met Prof. Rajni Hatti-Kaul at the
Dept. of Biotechnology, involved in several
research projects connected to India. More
information.
• Crafoord
funds to digitalise Karl Reinhold Haellquist’s collection
In 2004 a
unique collection of more than 6000 South Asia related books, journals,
videotapes and pamphlets on various aspects of South Asian studies
was donated to SASNET/Lund University. The
material comes from the private library of the renowned Swedish scholar
Karl Reinhold Haellquist who passed away in 2000, and were later donated
by his wife Inger Sondén-Haellquist.
Karl Reinhold was a historian specialised on South Asia, and worked
for many years at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Copenhagen.
The donated books were supposed to form a Memorial Collection at Lund
University’s Asian Library (more information),
but due to lack of funding this has not materialised so far. For now,
only a very small part of the collection is available for reference
in the Asia Library. However, in June 2007 the Crafoord Foundation
decided to give SEK 120 000 as a grant to SASNET in order to digitalize
Karl Reinhold Haellquist’s private archive – part of the
collection. New efforts are now being made to find means to catalogue
and find storage for the entire unique collection of books.
• VINNOVA funds Indo-Swedish E-health
project with SEK 1 million
After
the Indo-Swedish MoU on science and technology, signed in December 2005,
the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, VINNOVA,
has been given the task to develop applied research projects in biotechnology
and ICT-technology (especially E-health and E-governance)
with participation of both Indian and Swedish researchers and private
companies. In April 2007, VINNOVA therefore gave SEK 1 million as a
grant to the Swedish Institute of Computer Science
AB,
SICS, for a project on Indo-Swedish research collaboration within the
field of E-health. The project is led by the Managing Director of SICS,
Dr. Staffan Truvé, with a background from Chalmers Institute
of Technology and the School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg
University. He has also for many years worked for different IT and
research enterprises, and established the Interactive Institute and
the Victoria Institute, institutions closely associated to SICS.
A
high-level delegation from the Dept. of Biotechnology, Ministry of
Science and Technology, Government of India, visited Sweden 6–9
June 2007. The visit was carried out within the framework
of the 2005 MoU on science and technology. The Indian
delegation, led by Dr. Bhan, first visited the departments of Biotechnology,
Molecular Biology, WoodBio and Environmental Microbiology at the Royal
Institute of Technology (KTH). They also visited Karolinska Institutet – hosted
by Dr. Sanjeevi Carani – and Uppsala University’s Biomedical
Centre. At a meeting organised by VINNOVA in Stockholm, they also met
representatives from Chalmers Institute of Technology and Göteborg
University.
In the third week of June, another Indian high-level government delegation
visited Sweden just a week after the Biotechnology department delegation.
This time representatives from the Dept. of IT within the Ministry of Communications
and Information Technology, headed by its Director, Mr. K.K. Ghosh, visited
institutions in Stockholm, Göteborg
and Linköping focused on E-health. The visit was planned for by
VINNOVA.
• Nordic Summer University may opt for a South Asian
Studies programme
”South
Asia and the challenges of the 21st Century” is the theme for
a proposed new Nordic Summer University (NSU) programme. A
cluster of Nordic researchers in South Asian studies, comprising Peter
B Andersen, University of Copenhagen; Hans Blomkvist, University of
Uppsala; Michael W Hansen, Copenhagen Business School; Sidsel Hansson
and Catarina Kinnvall, Lund University; and Pamela Price, University
of Oslo, has prepared the proposal which includes three winter sessions
(2008-2010) and smaller thematic workshops at the yearly NSU summer
sessions. The aim is to connect presently dispersed scholars on South
Asian studies and upgrade the existing mass of Nordic PhD students
and younger researchers ia the Nordic Summer University activities.
For more than 50 years NSU has been known to develop academic and intellectual
debates that has involved several leading intellectuals, politicians,
and scholars of the Nordic countries. The organization is sponsored
by the Nordic Council of Ministers. A decision whether ”South
Asia and the challenges of the 21st Century” (which is a development
of a joint Nordic research school on Asia established in 2005 by NIAS
in Copenhagen – more information)
will be accepted as a NSU programme will be taken in August 2007. More
information about the proposal.
• First funding from the Facility to Wastewater Treatment
Project in Tiruppur
An
Indo-Swedish so-called Facility for Environmental Initiatives and Innovations
(”the Facility”)
was set up by Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation
Agency, in December 2006. The aim is to encourage knowledge
sharing and co-operation on development of new technical solutions
between India and Sweden, and to evolve best practices in the environmental
field. The Facility offers funds to apply for, and is open to Swedish
and Indian public institutions, the private sector, civil society and
research and academic institutions. On the Swedish side it is administered
by an officer at the Swedish Embassy in New Delhi. From 2007 the Facility
will be fully operational. More
information, including guidelines and full background material.
The first Swedish researcher to receive funding from the Facility
for Environmental Initiatives and Innovations is Prof. Bo Mattiasson
(photo to the right), Dept.
of Biotechnology, Lund University. Prof. Mattiasson leads
a major applied research project on biodegradable methods to
treat the waste water emanating from the textile industries
in the South Indian city of Tiruppur. The project, titled ”Development
of Process Technology for Treatment of Wastewaters from Greeting
Knit Wear in Tirupur, India”, was given SEK 600
000 as a grant from the Facility. More
information (as a pdf-file)
• Prakash Nelliyat defended his thesis at the University
of Madras
•
Dr Prakash Nelliyat, environmental economist from Madras School of Economics
in Chennai, India, has a long-standing relation to the Dept.
of Water and Environmental Studies, Linköping University.
On 22 November 2006, Prakash defended his doctoral dissertation titled ”Industrial
Growth and Environmental Degradation. A Case Study of Industrial
Pollution in Tiruppur”
at the University of Madras. The thesis deals with the rapid economic
growth achieved after globalization, and how it has adversely affected
the quality of the environment, imposed considerable social costs and
livelihood impacts and has become a major threat to sustainable development.
Even the industries in Tiruppur themselves have been affected by pollution.
The thesis concludes with recommendations of certain policies to achieve
an environmentally sustainable industrial development of Tiruppur. More
information.
• Evaluation team commended the activities
of NIAS
In
December 2006, an international evaluation team concluded that the
Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Copenhagen provides and communicates
accomplished research on Asia. According to the evaluation,
NIAS research is timely in addressing issues of great international
concern. In addition, NIAS successfully supports students and scholars
in the Nordic region and NIAS researchers act as expert advisors to
Nordic governments and firms and as commentators and disseminators
in the mass media as well. The fact that NIAS in reality puts very
little effort to South Asia related research is mentioned only in passing – with
a formulation that ”in other institutions, some Asia-area
specialists feel that their specific countries are not adequately emphasized
by NIAS, forcing them to compensate by devoting resources to their
own activities, such as the South Asian Network organized at Lund”. Read
the full evaluation report.
• No
French faculty has joined new technical university in Pakistan
Pakistan's
ambitious US$4.3 billion project to create nine Pakistani-European
engineering universities with 50 per cent of the faculty and administrators
from Europe (the
KTH university in Sialkot being one of them, more
information) is an example of how not to proceed, according to
Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy. In an article titled ”World-class
universities: a new holy grail”, published by SciDev.Net
on 6 June 2007, Prof, Hoodbhoy says that the official opening of the
first of these universities, in collaboration with a French consortium,
is scheduled for October this year. But the situation on the ground
is dismal. Because of Pakistan's dangerous security situation, the
French are absent from the university – as of March 2007 not
a single French faculty member had joined. But even if the Europeans
come, there are not enough Pakistani staff to teach at these universities.
And given the crisis in science education in Pakistan, there are simply
not enough well-prepared students to take advantage of the high-level
university instruction. Read
the full article.
• Identities: Reflections on Global Gujarati
Communities theme for Toronto conference
Important lectures and workshops
• Sudipta Kaviraj keynote speaker at 2007
SALT Thematic days in
Uppsala
The
Forum for Advanced Studies in Arts, Languages and Theology (SALT) at
Uppsala University arranges its yearly event, SALT Thematic days, on
4–5 October 2007. The theme for the 2007 event is ”Crossing
Disciplinary Boundaries”, and focus on the question of working
across and between disciplines, both from a theoretical perspective
(What do we actually mean by interdisciplinarity?) and a practical
perspective (How can it best be achieved?). Two renowned scholars,
Prof. Paisley Livingston and Prof. Sudipta Kaviraj, will initiate the
discussions on 4 October to be followed by a panel discussion on 5
October. The thematic days will conclude with a panel of ‘decision-makers’ in
research funding to be challenged by young researchers and doctoral
students. Prof. Kaviraj, professor of South Asian Politics in the Dept.
of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University
in New York, USA, will also hold one of the keynote lectures at the
2007 SALT Thematic days. More
information with full programme.
South Asia related culture in Scandinavia
• Qawwali
singer Mukhtiar Ali appears at the the 2007 Vadstena Re:Orient Festival
In
the 2007 Vadstena Re:Orient Festival held 10–11 August 2007, the
Qawwali singer Mukhtiar Ali from the village Pugal in Rajasthan, India,
will be one of the main attractions. Accompanying himself on the
harmonium, he will sing songs by Sufi poets such as Bulle Shah, Amir Khusro
and Baba Farid. The concert will be held on Friday 10 August 2007, 19.30
in Bröllopssalen, Vadstena Slott. It will be for the third year in
a row that the Stockholm based Re:Orient Festival now organises a decentralised
weekend festival focused on Mysticism within Christianity, Judaism and
Islam, in Vadstena. The festival
is titled ”Kärlekens dårar” (Lunatics
of Love) and involves several other concerts by artuists from the Middle
East, and interesting lectures by invited specialists, among them Owe
Wikström, Professor in Psychology of
Religion, Uppsala University. The programme is prepared by Vadstena-Akademien
in collaboration with the Church of Sweden. More
information.
New and updated items on SASNET web site
Best regards,
Staffan Lindberg Lars Eklund
SASNET/ Swedish South Asian Studies Network
SASNET is a national network
for research, education, and information about South Asia, based at Lund
University. The aim is to encourage and promote an open and dynamic networking
process, in which Swedish researchers co-operate with researchers in South
Asia and globally.
The network is open to all sciences. Priority is given to co-operation
between disciplines and across faculties, as well as institutions in the
Nordic countries and in South Asia. The basic idea is that South Asian
studies will be most fruitfully pursued in co-operation between researchers,
working in different institutions with a solid base in their mother disciplines.
The network is financed by Sida (Swedish
International Development Cooperation Agency) and by Lund
University.
Postal address: SASNET – Swedish South Asian Studies Network,
Scheelevägen 15 D, SE-223 70 Lund, Sweden
Visiting address: Ideon Research Park, House Alfa 1 (first floor,
room no. 2040), in the premises of the Centre for East and South East
Asian Studies at Lund University (ACE).
Phone: + 46 46 222 73 40
Fax: + 46 46 222 30 41
E-mail: sasnet@sasnet.lu.se
Web site:
http://www.sasnet.lu.se
Staff: Staffan
Lindberg, director/coordinator & Lars
Eklund, webmaster/deputy director
SASNET - Swedish South Asian Studies Network/Lund
University
Address: Scheelevägen 15 D, SE-223 70 Lund, Sweden
Phone: +46 46 222 73 40
Webmaster: Lars Eklund
Last updated
2010-11-18