The Ireland India Institute at Dublin City University is pleased to announce its Fifth Annual Conference on South Asia, which will be held online from April 27 – 29, 2022. Doctoral researchers, academics and activists are invited to send proposals for papers and panels addressing one of the thematic sections listed below.
We especially encourage papers from underrepresented groups including Queer, Dalit and minority perspectives. Without the mention of relevant themes, abstracts will not be included. We also invite panels with no more than 4 panellists. Panel Proposals can be made via email; please write to us at [email protected] for more information.
Registration Fee (General): €15
Registration Fee (Student): €5
Please find the full schedule here – Link
Themes:
Voices from South Asia: literature, film and media politics
This section invites abstracts from scholars conducting research in areas of South Asian literature, film and media, with a particular emphasis on under-researched voices from ethnic, religious, caste and gender minorities. In recent years, new criticism has emerged on the aesthetics and politics of translation, plurilingualism, intercultural interaction, media literacy, media dissemination and communication. We encourage applicants to help foreground the diversity of literary and cultural voices in South Asia and the interplay between media and politics.
Empire, Imperialisms, and Anti-imperialisms
In recent years the spotlight has been on the empire hidden in plain sight within the imperial core. Because imperial remnants in the postcolonial state are less easily identifiable than statues or street names in a former metropole, they are perhaps more difficult, but no less important, to challenge. To this end we encourage papers concerning facets and modes of empire that bridge the colonial and independent eras in South Asia. What aspects of state power and apparatus are common to both? How have colonial approaches to land, resource, and extraction endured, and how does this impact today’s rise of the renewable energy industry? What 21st-century conceptions of borders and migration, or nationality and citizenship, are rooted in empire? Concerning these or other topics, submissions that feature Indian-Irish connection and comparison are especially welcome.
Gender Studies – inter-disciplinary, intersectional and interactional developments
Illustrating the complex processes through which gender engages with other categories of identity and oppression and produces ossified social identities, the field of Gender Studies has facilitated the cultivation of critical enquiry in an interdisciplinary space spanning themes such as public health, political representation, labour studies, food culture studies, and media studies among others. Recent developments in Gender Studies have reconceptualised gender as intersectional as well as ‘interactional’- underlining the criticality of categories such as caste, race, class, region, and religion as well as macro-social and historical contexts in understanding the play of gender. Submissions are welcome on any theme pertinent to South Asia, that critically engages with gender as a lens of analysis.
South Asia and the Global Pandemic: Domestic politics and international relations
The current pandemic era has triggered changes to many processes within society, the way political systems function across the world as well as the fundamental relationship between the state and its citizens. With this backdrop, the section invites papers on South Asia that examine the role of the state in the face of a global and public health emergency; discussions about the limits to privacy in an age of growing technological surveillance; the impact of federalism on the state’s emergency response; implications for democracy, in particular the upholding of minority rights issues in South Asia, party politics, voter behaviour, election studies. The pandemic has also highlighted national vulnerabilities arising from global value chains and supply lines and intensified global geo-political competition between the US and China. Submissions on South Asia’s strategic response within the emerging, contested construct of the Indo-Pacific are particularly welcome.
Dilemmas of growth – prosperity, equity, and sustainability in South Asia
Abstracts are invited from scholars working on issues related to business and economics in a South Asian context. Housing over a quarter of the world’s population, South Asia often finds itself at crossroads, negotiating risks and challenges to reform such as popular resistance, rapidly evolving technology, and climate change to foster prosperity for its people. Progressive liberalisation reforms coupled with the rise of new-age entrepreneurial ventures have catalysed growth in South Asian economies over the past few years. However, despite meaningful gains, South Asian economies continue to face structural challenges such as rising inequality, precarious financial institutions, underdeveloped primary markets and rising unemployment. In addition to the structural challenges, South Asia also faces climate change-induced existential threats. Given South Asia’s unique position, we encourage applicants to propose new perspectives on broad macro- indicators of socio-economic development or critically reflect on existing research in the field.
Emerging Methodologies and non-Western Paradigms
Over the last decades, researchers have innovated and explored new ways of conducting research to adapt to contemporary social, political and economic changes. The call for decolonising research methodology has played an important part in this endeavour, and the expanding space of social science research from traditional materiality to forays into digital spaces have impressed new methods such as “netnography.” The global pandemic has compelled researchers to reconceptualise “data”, and explore and innovate in new approaches to data collection and interpretation. This theme explores these emerging methodologies, and invites proposals that share fresh perspectives in methodology in contemporary research, especially in the South Asian context. We urge postgraduate and PhD students, ECRs, activists and practitioners to contribute to this panel.
The Right to Education in South Asia
In light of the recent pandemic, educational institutions across the globe had to quickly adopt and adapt to online delivery systems. This also propelled private enterprises that forayed into the education space trying to outpace the traditional systems through innovative teaching and delivery systems. It is debatable whether a traditional education system that is delivered through a structured University system shall continue to prevail. For example, satellite relays, online transmissions, and other modes of mass communication have helped in reaching masses in remote areas, potentially enabling access to education like never before. In light of these rapid changes, questions of regulation, quality and sustainability inevitably arise. This section invites papers that contribute to how South Asian Higher Education delivery and learning paradigms are shifting and whether the traditional systems need to be challenged.