Summer Term 2021

SOUTH ASIA HERITAGE MONTH LECTURES

A series of lectures curated especially for UK civil servants & personnel to mark South Asia Heritage Month, in collaboration with the Department for Transport, UK.

Friday, 23 July | 3pm UK 

Christian Wolmar (@christianwolmar), Britain's bestselling transport historian and author of Railways and the Raj: How the Age of Steam Transformed India (2017), will speak on Britain's role and influence on India's now-vast railway network and system.   

Friday, 30 July | 3pm UK 

Edward Anderson (@edanderson101) is Lecturer in History at Northumbria University, and is a specialist in colonial/modern Indian history. Ed will speak on the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. 

Friday, 6 August | 3pm UK 

Maher Anjum (@MaherAnjum50) is a London-based British-Bangladeshi consultant with expertise in building cross-cultural strategic relationships currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Queen Mary University of London, and will speak on the independence of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan, from West Pakistan) in 1971, and the influence & contribution of the Bengali diaspora in Britain.

These lectures are closed to the public, and are being organised in collaboration with the Department for Transport, UK. Recordings of these lectures are not available. 

AMBEDKAR: Caste, Constitution, Gender

A Panel Discussion on the continuing importance & relevance of  the ideas of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar -- LSE's most famous Indian alumnus -- from a new generation of academics. 

Wednesday, 30 June | 3.30pm UK | 8pm India

Panelists: Rohit De (@itihaasnaama) is Associate Professor at Yale University, and the author of A People's Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in The Indian Republic (2018); Shailaja Paik is Associate Professor at the University of Cincinnati, and the author of Dalit Women's Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination (2014); Daniel Payne (@politicscurator) is Curator for Politics & International Relations, LSE Library; Suraj Yengde is with the Department of African & African American Studies, Harvard University,  and author of Caste Matters (2019).

Discussant: Jayaraj Sundaresan (@EvamTvayi) is LSE Fellow in Human Geography in the Department of Geography & Environment, LSE.

Chair: Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre. 

This event is in collaboration with LSE Library and Decolonising LSE Collective, and is in conjunction with the launch of a new online exhibition by LSE Library of documents relating to Dr Ambedkar's time at LSE, to mark the centenary of the award of his PhD in 1921-22.

A video-recording of this event is available here. 

ARTHA VIVAAD 2021

A Roundtable on new economic engagements with India, the emerging South Asian economic & consumer powerhouse.

INDIA: Aspirations & Contradictions in the Age of Nationalist Capital

Thursday, 17 June | 3.30pm UK | 8pm India 

Speakers: Sanjay Jain is Senior Fellow in the Department of Economics, University of Oxford; Ravinder Kaur (@rkadelhi) is Associate Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen, and author of Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twentieth-Century India (2020); Ila Patnaik (@IlaPatnaik) is an economist, and currently Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi.

Moderator: Nasser Munjee is an LSE alumnus, Chairman of Development Credit Bank (DCB) and Tata Motor Finance Ltd, both in India, and Chair of the Senior Advisory Board, LSE South Asia Centre. 

Chair: Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

This event is an annual Roundtable organised in collaboration with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, New York.

A video-recording of the event is available here.

FABIAN DIALOGUES 3

The 3rd in our series of Dialogues about Fabians who engaged with and wrote about South Asia, this event will focus on Leonard Woolf who spent a few years -- from 1904 to 1911 -- as a British civil servant in Jaffna and Kandy.

LEONARD WOOLF: Voicing 'Ceylon'? 

Wednesday, 9 June | 3.30pm UK | 8pm Sri Lanka

Speakers: Alexander Bubb (@sikandar_bubb) is Senior Lecturer in English at Roehampton University, and is a specialist in 19th-20th c. British literature & its encounter with South Asia; Minoli Salgado is Professor of  International Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, and the author of Writing Sri Lanka: Literature, Resistance and the Politics of Place (2012), and two works of fiction based in Sri Lanka; Peter Wilson is Associate Professor of International Relations at LSE, and the author of The International Theory of Leonard Woolf: A Study in Twentieth-Century Idealism (2003).

Moderator: Andrew Harrop (andrew_harrop) is Secretary, Fabian Society.

Chair: Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

This event is part of the LSE 125 Years celebrations, and is in collaboration with Fabian Society.

A video-recording of the event is available here.

How will Cryptocurrencies change South Asia?

A Roundtable on cryptocurrency, and its potential to change how we engage with money, finance and life in South Asia and beyond, with creators, believers and analysts of this new, global currency.

Thursday, 3 June | 3pm UK | 7pm Pakistan | 7.30pm India | 10am EST

Panelists: Muneeb Ali (@muneeb) is Co-Founder of Stacks & CEO of Hiro, a developer tooling company in the Stacks ecosystem; Jon Danielsson (@JonDanielsson) is Reader in the Department of Finance, and Director of the Systemic Risk Centre at LSE; Nischal Shetty (@NischalShetty) is Founder of WazirX, India's top-rated cryptocurrency exchange.

Chair: Alnoor Bhimani (@AlnoorBhimani) is Director, LSE South Asia Centre, and Professor of Management Accounting at LSE. 

A video-recording of the event is available here.

MILITARY MYANMAR: Fearing Freedom

A panel discussion with academics and activists on the military coup in Myanmar in February 2021 overturning the results of the recent elections, thus jeopardising the future of democracy in the country. 

Thursday, 27 May | 3.30pm UK | 9pm Myanmar

Speakers: David Brenner (@DavBrenner) is Lecturer in Global Insecurities at the University of Sussex, and author of Rebel Politics: A Political Sociology of Armed Struggle in Myanmar's Borderlands (2019); Htike Htike (@httike) is a Rohingya Research Scholar and Refugee Advocate from Rakhine State, and is currently conducting research on the inter-relationship between illicit drugs trade, state complicity and nation-building in Myanmar at Queen Mary University of London; Wai Hnin Pwint Thon (@MissWHPT) is a Burmese human rights activist with The Burma Campaign UK, and the daughter of Mya Aye, current and former political prisoner who has been at the forefront of Burma's Democracy movement for over 30 years; Sawangwongse Yawnghwe (@yawnghweoffice) is a Burmese artist, and the grandson of Sao Shwe Thaik, the first President of the Union of Burma who was overthrown & imprisoned in the military coup in 1962.

Moderator: Dominique Dillabough-Lefebvre (@domdlefebvre) is a Research Scholar at LSE Anthropology, conducting research on Myanmar.

Chair: Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

This event is in collaboration with the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre.

A video-recording of the event is available here. 

BANGLADESH @ 50

CLIMATE CHANGE: What Bangladesh Can Teach the World

The next in our series of events to mark Bangladesh's Golden Jubilee, this Roundtable will discuss what Bangladesh can teach the world from its experiences and innovative soutions to tackle climate change.  

Thursday, 20 May | 3.30pm UK | 8.30pm Dhaka

Panelists: Saleemul Huq (@SaleemulHuq) is Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD); Farah Kabir (@kabirfarah) is Country Director, ActionAid Bangladesh; Khushi Kabir (@KhushiKabir) is Secretary & Coordinator, 'Nijera Kori', Dhaka; Shahpar Selim (@garam_cha) is Mission Environmental Officer & Climate Intergation Lead, USAID, Dhaka.     

Moderator: David Lewis (@lewis100) is Professor of Social Policy & Development at LSE; his research expertise is  on Bangladesh. 

Chair: Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

A video-recording of this event is available here.

FACT & FICTION

GANDHI: Disobedience & its Art

A Roundtable between art historians, museum curators, textual scholars & historians on visual cultures and their importance in historical research and understanding.  

Thursday, 13 May | 3.30pm UK | 8pm India

Speakers: Monica Juneja is Professor of Global Art History at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies: Asia & Europe, University of Heidelberg; Sumathi Ramaswamy is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History, Duke University, and the author of Gandhi in the Gallery: The Art of Disobedience (2020); Tridip Suhrud is Provost of CEPT University (formerly Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology), Ahmedabad, where he is also Professor & Director of the CEPT Archives, and is author of the globally acclaimed critical edition of Gandhi's An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (2018). 

Moderator: Anselm Franke is Head of Visual Arts & Film at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin where he curated 'Love & Ethnology: The Colonial Dialectic of Sensitivity (after Hubert Fichte)' in 2019-20.   

Chair: Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

A video-recording of this event is available here. 

GEOPOLITICS BEYOND BORDERS 3

KASHMIR: Frontier & Shroud

The 3rd Roundtable in the series looks at the vexed issue of Kashmir,  and Indo-Pak bilateral relations especially in light of peace gestures from both sides after a period of disengagement. 

Thursday 6 May | 3.30pm UK | 7.30pm Pakistan | 8pm India

Speakers: Myra Macdonald (@myraemacdonald) is an expert on South Asian politics and security issues on which she has published 3 books including, very recently, White as a Shroud: India, Pakistan and War on the Frontiers of Kashmir (2021); Pallavi Raghavan (@pallaviraghava1) is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Ashoka University, Sonepat, and author of Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India-Pakistan Relationship, 1947-1952 (2020); and Farzana Shaikh is Associate Fellow at Chatham House, London, and an expert on Pakistan. 

Moderator: Rahul Roy-Chaudhury is Senior Fellow for South Asia at The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London.

Chair: Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre. 

This event is in collaboration with LSE IDEAS and The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London. 

A video-recording of this event is available here.

HUMAN FIGHTS: Celebrating I. A. Rehman (1930-2021)

A special event to celebrate the life & legacy of iconic Pakistani human rights advocate and Magsaysay award-winner Ibn Abdur Rehman.

Tuesday, 4 May | 3.30pm UK | 7.30pm Pakistan | 8pm India

Speakers: Asad Jamal (@LegalPolitical) is an independent lawyer working on cases of human rights and civil liberties in Pakistan, and was closely associated with I. A. Rehman; Hina Jilani is an Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and a Founding Member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) where I. A. Rehman was Director; Kalpana Kannabiran is a sociologist and lawyer, and was until recently Director, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad (India). She has written extensively on civil liberties and human rights issues in India, and knew I. A. Rehman personally.

Moderator: Amber Darr (@AmberMDarr) is a Barrister & Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Lecturer in Law at Coventry University, and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Law, Economics & Society, University College London.   

Chair: Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

A video-recording of this event is available here.