Page 10 - SAU Connect March 2019

The Quarterly Newsletter of South Asian University | Volume 3 Issue 3 March 2019

Collaborative Ethnography
New Delhi (4-6.12.2018) SAU Sociology News: The Faculty of
Social Sciences, SAU, conducted a series of events in
collaborationwiththeUniversityofChicago,beginningon
of December 2018. The first event took place at the
University of Chicago India Centre featuring a panel
discussion on the theme ‘Do Area Studies Matter’. The
discussion involved Prof. Sanjay Chaturvedi, Dean, Faculty
of Social Sciences SAU, and Prof. Lisa Wedeen, Mary R.
Morton Professor of Political Science, The University of
Chicago. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Ankur Datta, SAU. The second event that took place on of
December at SAU was a workshop titled ‘Tracking the Politics of Culture’, which brought together
ethnographers to discuss the challenges of research on political life. This workshop involved presenters
and discussants from JNU, NIEPA, the University of Delhi, Ambedkar University Delhi and SAU. The
keynote address was given by Prof. Wedeen of the University of Chicago on the topic ‘Conceptualizing
‘Culture’: Language/Power/Practice’. The third and final event was an interactive session between
students of the FSS with Prof. Wedeen, which took place on 6th of December 2018. This programme was
thefirstcollaborationbetweenSAUandtheUniversityofChicago.

BeyondtheBorder
Heidelberg, Germany (01.02.19) SAU Sociology News: Prof Sasanka Perera (Department of Sociology) was
.
invited as an Erasmus Plus Scholar to the South Asia
Institute at University of Heidelberg from 1st to 10th
February 2019. During his time in SAI, he discussed the
possibility of initiating an International Research
Training Group (Internationales Graduierten Kolleg)
with involvement of both South Asian University and
University of Heidelberg for graduate students with an
interest in South Asian Studies. Professor William Sax at
the Department of Anthropology, South Asia Institute , initiated the idea. During his time in Heidelberg, in
addition to his own research and writing, Prof . Perera also delivered a guest lecture titled, ‘The Bogey-
Man of Area Studies: Reading South Asia in Contemporary Times’ on 6 February at Karl Jaspers Centre for
Advanced Transcultural Studies, University of Heidelberg. The event was co-organized by the South Asia
InstituteandProfessorshipofGlobalArtHistoryatUniversityofHeidelberg.

International Conference on Mathematical Modelling and Computation
New Delhi (1-3.12.2018) SAU DM News: The Department
of Mathematics organised an international conference
on Mathematical Modelling and Computations under
the aegis of IAMMS, IIT Kanpur during 1-3 December
2018. The conference was attended by around 250
participants. The main subjects of the conference were
contemporaryandemergingresearchonmathematical
modelling, numerical methods for ODEs, PDEs & their
applications in different fields of biology and life sciences such as Epidemiology, Ecosystem dynamics,
Ecotoxicology, Oncology, Cellular heterogeneity and dynamics, Food web models of interacting species,
fluid flow in biological systems etc. There was a special session devoted to the memory of Prof. H I
Freedman. Eminent mathematicians such as Prof. Yang Kunag, USA, Prof. Choel Min Ghim, Korea, Prof.
Ryusuke Kon, Japan and many from SAARC countries shared their research finding with the participants.
TheprogrammewascoordinatedbyDr.SarojKumarSahanioftheDepartmentofMathematics.

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