Page 9 - SAU Connect March 2019

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

Seminar on International Organizations
New Delhi (04.12.2018) SAU DIR News: The Department of International Relations, Faculty of Social
Sciences, organized a seminar on ‘Addressing Contemporary Challenges for International Organizations:
Responses from the Global South’. The seminar aimed to examine the ways in which countries from the
Global South – as stakeholders in global multilateralism – have exercised their agency in the face of
challenges such as re-emergence of narrow nationalism and
financial cuts encountered by international organizations
today. It also sought to facilitate engagement between
scholars and practitioners on the subject. The first panel
included presentations by Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji
(Former Permanent Representative of India to the United
Nations), Ambassador Latha Reddy (Commissioner, Global
Commission on Internet Governance, and Former Deputy
National Security Adviser of India) and Prof. Ashwani Saith
(Erasmus University Rotterdam). The session was facilitated by Dr. Constantino Xavier (Brookings India).
The second panel, facilitated by Prof. CSR Murthy (Jawaharlal Nehru University), included presentations
by Ms. Ruchita Beri (Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses), Prof. Sreeram Chaulia (OP Jindal Global
University)andDr.MallikaShakya(SAU).TheopeningandclosingremarksweredeliveredbyProf.Sanjay
Chaturvedi (Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, SAU) and Dr. Kavita Sharma (President, SAU) respectively.
TheseminarwasconvenedbyDr.SoumitaBasu,DepartmentofInternationalRelations,SAU.

International Conference

New Delhi (01-02.03.2019) SAU DIR News: Department of
International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian
University, in collaboration with University of Mumbai, Tata
Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and the Nehru Memorial
Museum and Library, Delhi, successfully organized the Second
South Asian Border Studies Conference with the theme -
“Beyond Boundaries and Borders: South Asian Quest for Peace,
Development and Regional Connectivity”. The two-day
international conference was hosted by the Department of
Civics and Politics, University of Mumbai at the Pheerozshah Mehta Bhavan and Research Centre, located
at the Kalina campus of the University. The conference was supported by the Indian Council of World
Affairs (ICWA), the Borders in Globalisation (BIG) and the Association for Borderlands Studies (ABS). The
conference drew in participants from across South Asia, like Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. The
participation of almost fifty scholars from around the region made the conference a watershed in the
development of a systematic discipline of border studies in South Asia. It also drew on eminent scholars
such as Prof . Sukh Deo Muni, Prof Paula Bannerjee, Prof Shibashis Chatterjee and Prof Sanjay
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Chaturvedi, Prof . Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, Prof David Newman and Dr. Nader Fekri. The conference
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hosted three stimulating round tables around the topics “Future of South Asian Border Studies”, “Past,
Present and Future of South Asian Borders: Connectivity and Regional Integration” and “Statelessness
and Refugee Protection: Issues and Challenges”. The diverse topics of the parallel sessions included -
“Conceptualising Borders, Boundaries and Borderlands”, “South Asian Regional Connectivity”,
“Comparative Border Studies and Regionalism”, and “Humanitarian Challenges: Displacement and
ForcedMigration,RefugeesandStatelessness”.TheconferencewasconvenedbyDr.DhananjayTripathi,
DepartmentofInternationalRelations,SAU.

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