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In the summer 2013, the Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET), the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), and the Nordic Centre in India (NCI) are planning to jointly organize the fourth Nordic Conference on South Asian Studies for Young Scholars to be held at Falsterbo kursgård in Höllviken (Sweden).
The main objective of the conference is to gather doctoral candidates, post-doctoral researchers, and other young scholars who are affliated to universities in the Nordic countries (including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) and focus on South Asia in their research. Since 2009 the conference has been successfully organized by SASNET and in 2011 it was carried out in collaboration with NIAS.
In order to customize the 2013 conference to current research interests and needs, the organisers now invite young scholars doing research on or having interest in the South Asian region to submit suggestions on what they consider important to address during this conference. The suggestions can be freely formulated and will be used as input for the conference planners.
Please send your suggestions to Julia Velkova (Julia.Velkova@sasnet.lu.se) by June 15, 2012, at the latest.
On Wednesday 16 May 2012, an evening programme devoted to Indian society and culture was held in Lund. The successful event was jointly organised by SASNET/Lund University and Arbetarnas Bildningsförbund (ABF) Lund, and was free of charge. It drew a full house.
The programme started at 6 P.M. with a lecture by Professor G K Karanth on ”Caste ‘Pride’ and Caste ‘Prejudice’: Personal Reflections”. During the academic year 2011/12 Prof. Karanth has been the ICCR India Chair Professor at Lund University hosted by SASNET and the Department of Sociology. In his presentation, he discussed issues related to Indian caste identities, based on his own personal experiences as having been born and brought up in a family with a caste identity of its own.
The lecture was followed by an appreciated performance by the new India Choir of Lund (Indiska Kören i Lund), led by Bubu Munshi Eklund and Thomas Wiehe, and then came the cultural highlight of the evening – a classical North Indian music concert by young talented Sarod player Somabanti Basu from Kolkata, being accompanied by her husband Suman Sarkar on Tabla, offering a woderful concert programme, higly appreciated by the audience.
More information about the SASNET/ABF India Evening.
Professor Dipak Malik, Director for the Gandhian Institute of Studies in Varanasi, India, holds a SASNET lecture on ”Indian Naxalism Today” on Tuesday 29 May 2012, 15.15–17.00. Prof. Malik is currently on a tour to Finland and Sweden (on invitation by the Nordic Centre in India consortium) and comes to visit Lund because of his close connection to SASNET, being a member of SASNET’s South Asian Reference Group. Venue for the seminar: Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, conference room, Scheelevägen 15 D, Lund.
The reenergized Maoist movement in India is often referred to as Naxalism because of its beginning in late 1960s emanating from a small hamlet of the northern part of the state of West Bengal. Naxalbari has in recent years again emerged as a potential force of course in India, though within a different context. Maoism today poses a vital question that needs a perspective from the world of social sciences.
In his presentation, Prof. Malik focuses on its strong impact even on districs near to Varanasi in the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh state. Many people in India, including a section in the government are dismissive about it as being merely a law and order question. Others however show an understanding of the problems, they find deep maladies in the Indian society and the current development path, which leads to an insurrectionary mode of protest. It should be noted that these deep rooted maladies in the world of Indian peasantry were described already in the 1950s by Gandhians like Vinoba Bhave, albeit as an aftermath of the Telengana peasant revolt.
0n 29 May 2012, 12.00 – 13.00 the second Go:India & SASNET Brown Bag seminar will be held in Gothenburg. Venue: The Glass House (Glashuset), Chalmersgatan 4, Göteborg (the Inner Court Yard, between the School of Photography and the Valand School of Fine Arts).
On Tuesday 22 May 2012, Assistant Professor Anamika Barua from the 
A large crowd of people joined the Indian cultural programme/Mela that was held at Lunds konsthall on Saturday 14th April 2012. The programme was jointly organized by Konsthallen, SASNET, Lunds kommun/Kulturskolan and ABF, and was held in connection with an Indian art exhibition at Lunds konsthall, an exhibition entitled Social Fabric. The exhibition, to a large extent focusing on textile production in India, includes works by prominent Indian artists such as Archana Hande, Sudhir Patwardan, and Raqs Media Collective.
Anne Stenersen at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) defended her doctoral dissertation entitled ”Explaining the Relationship between al-Qaida and the Taliban, 1996-2001” on Friday 11 May 2012. The first opponent was Antonio Giustozzi (London School of Economics) and the second opponent Magnus Ranstorp (Försvarshögskolan, Stockholm). Venue: Arne Næss Auditorium, George Morgenstiernes hus, University of Oslo, Blindern.
Per-Olof Fjällsby, 
The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS) has presented a Call for proposals for arranging workshops/hearings to explore future research cooperation with India. Applications can be submitted by researchers with PhDs who are working at a Swedish research institution. Deadline for submission is 19 June 2012.
Dr. Sirajul Islam from Örebro University School of Business has been conferred the ‘Börje Langefors second best doctoral dissertation award’ (or Börje Langeforspriset in Swedish) from the 
The Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) hosted at the University of Bergen, Norway, requests entries for the CROP International Studies in Poverty Prize 2012. The winner will receive NOK 50.000 and deadline is 1 August 2012.
During 2012, the South Asia Institute (SAI) at Heidelberg University, Germany, celebrates its 50th anniversary. All through the year, SAI organizes and presents – both in Heidelberg and in South Asia – single events, symposia and workshops, plus a central week of celebration in May, a lecture series with renowned researchers invited, and special programmes on single topics and countries of South Asia. This is all done under the heading: The South Asia Institute: 50 Years of Looking Ahead.
The Swedish travel agency Läs & Res (Study Tours) with more than 30 years experience of alternative travel tours in various parts of South Asia has announced a position as tour producer for its India and China businesses. Applicants should have an academic education and have a large knowledge and experience of these countries. Deadline for applications is 15 June 2012, but early applications are preferred. 
The 
Professor P. Sahadevan, Professor of South Asian Studies, 
Dr. Ashok Kumar, Professor of Bioengineering at the Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, Kanpur, holds a guest lecture at Lund University on Wednesday 23 May 2012, 13.00–14.00. He will talk about ”Tissue Engineering: Where Medicine and Engineering Merge”. Venue: Dora Jacobsohn lecture hall, Biomedical Centre (BMC), entrance D 15, Klinikgatan 32, Lund.
The Swedish Development Research Network on Nature, Poverty and Power (DevNet), based at Uppsala University, invites to a one-day symposium entitled ”Democracy and Development: A Disputable Pair” on Thursday 31 May 2012, 10–17. The symposium marks the probable closure of DevNet (at least in its present shape), since its funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) has come to an end. It will therefore be dedicated to a retrospective as well as forward looking discussion on the central concepts of democracy, (sustainable) development, globalisation and power. Venue: Hambergssalen, Geocentrum, Villavägen 16, Uppsala University. Participants should register before May 28th to 
In his presentation, Lars Rudebeck (photo) will sum up his thinking on the symposium theme after half a century of research, teaching and efforts to support transdisciplinarity in the field of development studies. He was one of the founders of the interdisciplinary Uppsala-Stockholm arena called the AKUT Group (Working Group for the Study of Development Strategies) based at Uppsala University, 1976-1993, as well as the subsequent Seminar for Development Studies (SDS), which in 2008 was transformed into the nation-wide research network DevNet. The continuous aim of these and related constellations has been to promote interdisciplinary exchange in the field of ‘development studies’, and Lars Rudebeck has been one of the central figures in making this possible. Thus, the present symposium is also a tribute to this life-long effort of his.
Brahma Chellaney, Professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, India, holds a guest lecture at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in Norway on Monday 4 June 2012, 13.00–14.30. He will speak about ”A Dam-Building Race in Asia: How to Contain the Geopolitical Risks”. Venue: PRIO, Hausmannsgate 7, Oslo.
The 
For the second year, the University of Copenhagen organises a course entitled ”Decoding India! – How to make Sense of a Paradox” as part of its Copenhagen Summer University academic programme, 13 – 17 August 2011 at the University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg Campus. Deadline for applications is 29 May 2012.
The 
The third annual Young South Asia Scholars Meet (Y-SASM) Workshop will be held in Heidelberg, Germany, 14–16 June 2012. The theme for the 2012 Y-SASM Workshop, to be hosted by the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University, will be ”Beyond the Metropolis. Implications of Urbanization in South Asian Towns and Small Cities”. Deadline for handing in papers is set for 31 January 2012.
Ghent University organises an interdisciplinary conference on "Crossroads between Empires and Peripheries – Knowledge Transfer, Product Exchange and Human Movement in the Indian Ocean World" to take place between 21 - 23 June 2012 in Ghent, Belgium. The main focus of the conference will be to explore the dichotomy between legal and illegal (contraband), private and official exchange, anchored in the following five topics: - Private and official commercial exchange; - Exchange of knowledge, technology, and ideology; - Human movement and migration (including slave trade); - Controversy or parallelism of tribute and trade; - Indirect impacts of IOW global exchange (e.g. diseases, espionage, creolization, etc.). 
The Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) organises its 19th Biannual conference 11 – 13 July 2012 on the Parramatta Campus of the 
A conference on ”Indian Pluralism and Warren Hastings' Regime” will be held at University of Wales in Gregynog, Powys, UK, on 18–20 July 2012. Plenary speakers include Dr Natasha Eaton (King's College, London); the author William Dalrymple; Professor Carl Ernst (North Carolina), Professor P. J. Marshall (King's College, London), and Professor Daniel White (Toronto). The aim of this conference is to provide a more complete and multidisciplinary picture of the amateur Orientalists of the Hastings circle and the politico-cultural significance of their work. Jones sought similitude between West and East, and part of this overarching project was to stress the compatibility of Hindu and Islamic mysticism. There was an imperialist ideological dimension here; it was a means of aligning the regime's need to appear both neo-Brahmanical and neo-Mughal. (Portrait of Warren Hastings). 
The 
The SAARC International Seminar on 'Archaeology of Buddhism: Recent Discoveries in South Asia' will be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 22–24 August 2012. It is supposed to focus on Buddhist sites and remains that have been worked up during the last six decades or so. It would include both kinds of papers – straightforward ones that just report archaeological finds; but will also have a second part to it that interrogates the methodological/ theoretical frameworks within which archaeological work is carried out. Venue: Buddhist Cultural Centre, Colombo.
The 
The South Asia Research and Information Institute (SARII) in Dallas, Texas, USA, organizes a one-day conference on ”Cities, Courts, and Saints: Muslim Cultures of South Asia” on Saturday 22 September 2012, 09.00–17.00. The conference is co-organised by the The Asian Studies Program at Southern Methodist University, also in Dallas. Venue for the conference: McCord Auditorium, Dallas Hall, Southern Methodist University. his conference brings together the leading historians of South Asia and specialists of Indo-Muslim cultures, and presents new research on the way Islam spread across and became part of the Indian subcontinent. Since the arrival of Islam in South Asia, Muslim communities thrived in cities, giving them a unique shape with new forms of courtly and spiritual life. A key aspect of Indo-Muslim culture was, and remains, the popularity of Sufi saints and their shrines. The papers presented by for example Richard M Eaton and Barbara Metcalfe focus on the entire range of Indo-Muslim history, from the medieval era to modern times, to shed new light on forms of social etiquette, literature, music, and architecture. 
The International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden, the Netherlands; the Asia-Europe Foundation; the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS, and the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, jointly organise an international conference on ”Asia-Europe Encounters: Intellectual and Cultural Exchanges, 1900-1950”. The conference will be held 7 – 8 December 2012 at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. The purpose of the conference is to explore the intellectual and cultural flows between Asia and Europe which occurred during, and in part were formative of, the political and social changes over the first half of the 20th century. Aside of post-colonialism, the conference will encourage an exploration of the intellectual and cultural currents of this age and an investigation into how the two ends of Eurasia interacted in these spheres through (new) cosmopolitanism and other novel ideologies which affected both European and Asian societies. Young scholars from Asia and Europe are encouraged to apply. Abstracts of 300 – 400 words and a short biographical sketch of the proposer are to be submitted by 30 May 2012. All participants will be provided with three nights accommodation in Singapore. Requests for assistance with airfare, especially from Asian countries, will be sympathetically considered. 
An International Conference on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions (ICTer) will be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 12–15 December 2012. ICTer is the successor to the seminal International Information Technology Conference held in Sri Lanka since 1998, the IITC. It provides a platform where research done in ICT is presented by both local and foreign computer scientists and IT professionals. In order to get wider international participation and to promote computing research in the fast emerging regions of the world especially in Asia-Pacific, it was decided to broadbase the conference and links it with the related International Journal ICTer. The proceedings of ICTer2012 will be published in both book and online versions with an ISBN number and also in IEEE Explorer; Google Scholar. Selected papers will be invited for publication in the ICTer Journal. Papers and tutorial proposals are invited in the following five broad categories, but not limited to: Technology, Applications, Human Computer Interaction, Development Processes and Social, Legal and Ethical Issues. 
The Indian artist Srinivasa Prasad from Bangalore is represented with one of his pieces of art at the outdoor Wanås Konst exhibition inbetween Hässleholm and Knislinge in southernmost Sweden during the summer 2012, from 20 May till 28 October. For his creative work, Prasad uses natural materials such as mud, hay, water, grains, and cow dung, sith a deep root in the tradition and culture of his native land. He also takes in the essence of performing arts to his works and emphasizes the interaction between the audiences and the work. On the green lawn at Wanås, a stretch of tall willows was recently planted, a 40-metre coiling line that would measure 500 metres if it were straight. The saplings are planted in the form of a labyrinth to form Srinivasa Prasad the artist's signature written in Kannada, the provincial language of his Karnataka state in India. See photo.
The Kutiyattam dance troupe from the Natana Kairali Research and Performing Centre for Traditional Arts in Irinjalakuda, Thrissur District, Kerala, India, again visits Sweden in May 2012. This time the Natana Kairali dance troupe will give two public performances at Teater Sagohuset in Lund, on Friday 25 May and Sunday 27 May, at 19.00. Venue: Sagohuset, Revingegatan 8, Lund.
The Swedish journalist Börje Almqvist, working for many years for the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan inside Afghanistan from the 1980s and onwards, shows his vast collection of photos from Afghanistan at en exhibition in Stockholm during the summer 2012. The exhibition, entitled ”Children and Youth in Afghanistan”, is shown in the Orangerie at Vintervikens Trädgård in Aspudden, in southwestern Stockholm (metro station Aspudden). Opening hours in May: 11.00–17.00, July–August: 11.00–21.00.
