Announcements Archives • Page 4 of 55 • The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute

A Look Back on Mittal Institute’s Spring Flagship Events: May 2-3, 2024

May 9, 2024 | Announcements, Community, News

On May 2-3, the Mittal Institute kicked off its spring flagship events with standing room only for an Honorary Lecture by Prof. Diana Eck with faculty from across the university, alumni, students and many distinguished guests and experts on South Asia. The momentum continued with a Science and Technology symposium focused on AI, empathy in medicine, genetics, and climate change in South Asia, culminating with this year’s annual Harish C. Mahindra Lecture by WHO expert Soumya Swaminathan.

Storykit Program Inspires Academic Excellence in Pakistan Schools

May 8, 2024 | Alumni, Announcements, In Region, News, Pakistan

Reading is paramount, explains Musharraf Ali Farooqi, a former Mittal Institute Fellow, saying, “Becoming a reader is the first step on the path to becoming a self-learner.” A novelist, scholar, and translator, Musharraf is also the founder of the STORYKIT Program, a unique program that inspires a love of reading among Pakistan’s children. STORYKIT boxes teach children the Urdu language, its classical literature, and its folklore through engaging, age-appropriate stories.

In 2023, Storykit launched the Pakistan Spelling Bee, holding competitions for both English and Urdu languages nationwide. Farooqi is leading a Malala Fund supported program to help adolescent female students in Pakistan public schools write about their educational journey. Storykit is also carrying out an internet safety, media literacy and climate resilience campaign for Google Foundation.

Aisha Kokan ’26 Studied Mental Health in India through LMSAI Grant

May 8, 2024 | Announcements, In Region, India, News, Students

This winter, Aisha Kokan ’26 was awarded a Mittal Institute student grant to complete research in Chennai, India. Her project, Body Image & Eating Disorders: Enduring Legacies of Historical Trauma on Women in Tamil Nadu, India, explored mental health...

Annual Symposium Preview: Understanding Climate in South Asia

Apr 23, 2024 | Announcements, Climate, News

Prof. Francesca Dominici, the Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population, and Data Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Faculty Director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative, will join the “Understanding Climate Change in South Asia” panel at LMSAI’s Annual Cambridge Symposium: Science and Technology. As a data scientist, Prof. Dominici develops statistical methods and machine learning approaches to look for patterns that address complex public health issues, such as air pollution, noise, and climate change. We spoke to her about her research in the Q&A below.

Annual Symposium Preview: Genetics and Medicine

Apr 23, 2024 | Announcements, News

Vijay Chandru, one of the speakers in the “Genetics and Medicine” panel at LMSAI’s Annual Cambridge Symposium: Science and Technology, is a Visiting Scientist in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health. He is an academic entrepreneur, having founded a number of digital health companies including Strand Life Sciences, a life science informatics and precision medicine solutions company based in Bangalore, India, after spending 23 years in academia. He was recognized as a “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum and was recently elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington DC. He shared more about his life’s work in the Q&A below.

Annual Symposium Preview: The Role of Empathy in Global Health & Social Medicine

Apr 22, 2024 | Announcements, Climate, India, News

Dr. Bharat Vatwani, one of the speakers at LMSAI’s Annual Cambridge Symposium: Science and Technology – the Future of South Asia, is a psychiatrist based in Mumbai who has dedicated much of his professional career to aiding the mentally ill. Together with his wife, Dr. Smitha, he founded Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation in 1988, an NGO dedicated to treating mentally ill and unhoused individuals in India. He shared more about his life’s work in the Q&A below, and previewed what attendees can expect at his fireside chat.

The Mittal Institute’s Summer 2024 Student Grant Recipients

Apr 18, 2024 | Announcements, In Region, News, Students

Each semester, the Mittal Institute offers grants to Harvard students to further their research, language study, or internship opportunities. This coming summer 2024, 13 students were awarded grants to carry out projects across five countries, ranging from studies on women in Urdu print culture, to the career mobility of rural-urban migrants in India, to the environmental impacts on mothers with disabled infants, to language studies on Persian, Mewati, and more.

On Community Engagement for Climate Resilience: A Q&A with Mihir Bhatt

Apr 16, 2024 | Announcements, Climate, In Region, News

In this second instalment of a new interview series with Mittal Institute’s Climate Change Platform collaborators in South Asia, we spoke with Mihir Bhatt, the director of the All India Disaster Mitigation Institute. An architect and city planner by training and practice, he’s a former fellow with the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University and was deputy lead to joint evaluation of the humanitarian work of both UN and international nongovernmental agencies on tsunami relief and rehabilitation activities in coastal areas of South India, and Indonesia. He was a coordinating lead author of a chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report, “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation” where heatwaves were a focus.

Nazmul Haque, Mason Fellow, Pioneers Energy Initiatives in Rural Bangladesh

Apr 16, 2024 | Announcements, Bangladesh, Climate, News

Nazmul Haque, a current Mason Fellow in ClassACT HR73’s Benazir Bhutto Leadership Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, has a long history of developing public-private partnerships in response to climate change in his home country of Bangladesh. His experience was a case study for a recent symposium, “Climate Change, Public-Private Partnerships, and Social Equity: Lessons from Bangladesh” – also co-sponsored by the Weatherhead Center and the Salata Institute – in which Harvard practitioners and professors gathered to examine and enlarge upon the examples offered by Nazmul’s career. We spoke with him about his commitment to sustainability, and what the symposium meant for him.

It Takes a Village: Harvard Students Reflect on Creating the HUM SAB EK (We Are One) Exhibition

Apr 10, 2024 | Announcements, COVID-19, India, News, Students

The multimedia exhibition HUM SAB EK (We Are One) launched this past week at CGIS South (read an interview with project leader Dr. Satchit Balsari here). Ahead of the April 15 Opening Reception, we spoke with some of the students who volunteered their time to make this exhibition a reality. Few had prior experience bringing an exhibit to life, yet they all pitched in to make it a reality. They hail from departments and schools across Harvard, with a variety of academic backgrounds and interests. Together they created something powerful, and look forward to bringing their immersive show to sites around the U.S. in in South Asia.

Courses on South Asia at Harvard: Fall 2024

Apr 9, 2024 | Announcements, News, Students

Harvard offers a wide array of courses on South Asia, ranging from language to history, politics, economics, religion, and much more. Check out a selection of what is offered during Fall 2024. Please refer to the Course Catalog for the most up-to-date information. We...

A. Revathi, Activist and Performer, on Her Journey as an Indian Trans Woman

Apr 9, 2024 | Announcements, India, News

Vellai Mozhi – Frankly Speaking is a powerful first-person account of a hijra-thirunangai-transfeminine experience in southern India. A. Revathi enacts her life as a Tamil trans woman, stringing stories about finding community, navigating family relationships, encountering violence, building solidarities, finding and losing love, and discovering the joys of writing and performing. A. Revathi previewed the upcoming April 18 event for us in a Q&A.

Category : Announcements