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Category : Announcements

On Greening Underserved Communities in Mumbai: Arshaya Sood GSD’23

Jan 31, 2023 | Announcements, In Region, India, News, Students

On Greening Underserved Communities in Mumbai: Arshaya Sood GSD’23

Arshaya Sood, a Master’s student in the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design, spent her summer in Mumbai, India, conducting fieldwork in the Urban Development department at the World Resources Institute Mumbai. Her work, part of an LMSAI student grant, explored urban planning and urban development efforts on the Mumbai Climate Action Plans Urban Greening & Biodiversity action track, under Cities4Forests initiative. The program works with the city and state governments and the community to improve greening efforts within underserved areas of Mumbai. Arshaya shared her experience in the Q&A below.

Street Vending E-Carts, Funded by LMSAI Grant, Launch in India

Jan 24, 2023 | Announcements, Community, India, News, Social Enterprise, South Asia in the News

Street Vending E-Carts, Funded by LMSAI Grant, Launch in India

Electric Rehi, or e-Rehri for short, is a 2022 Seed for Change grant recipient that is working towards providing affordable, electric and modular carts for street vendors in Indian cities, making the daily delivery of fresh produce efficient for both the vendors and the consumers alike. Electric vehicle technology is retrofitted to traditional Indian street carts, creating an incremental and affordable transition to green energy. Using this method, any existing cart can be transformed into an electric vehicle while retaining its ability to function as a mechanical tricycle cart. 

LMSAI’s Winter Reading Recommendations

Dec 7, 2022 | Announcements, Associates, Community, Faculty, Fellows, News, Students

As winter descends on Cambridge’s skies, our thoughts turn to novels read by the comfort of roaring fires. Nothing completes a holiday season more than a good book—so we turned to our community of faculty, fellows and students for their help in curating a list of Holiday Reading Recommendations. They shared their favorite South Asian authors; their most inspiring reads; and what they hope to cozy up with this holiday season.

GSA Spotlight: Nusrat Jahan Mim on Designing in Urban Bangladesh

Nov 30, 2022 | Announcements, Bangladesh, Community, Graduate Student Associates, In Region, News

GSA Spotlight: Nusrat Jahan Mim on Designing in Urban Bangladesh

Nusrat Jahan Mim, a Mittal Institute Graduate Student Associate, is a Doctor of Design candidate at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Her research focuses on post-colonial, post-secular urban designs and human-computer interaction. By examining existing systems, she explores how different spatial and technical designs challenge or propagate social exclusions in the Global South. She is a Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative Fellow for the academic year 2022-23. Prior to Harvard, she won the prestigious AIA Henry Adams Medal from Syracuse School of Architecture for achieving the highest academic rank in M.Arch. The Mittal Institute also profiled her work on makeshift cattle markets in Dhaka in a September 2021 newsletter. We spoke with Nusrat to get an update on her work and new GSA role.

LMSAI Delhi Office Welcomes Monika Setia as Associate Country Director

Nov 30, 2022 | Announcements, Community, In Region, India, News

LMSAI Delhi Office Welcomes Monika Setia as Associate Country Director

We are pleased to welcome Monika Setia as she joins the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute as Associate Country Director in the India office. Monika will assist with building bridges between Harvard and India related to research in and about the region. She will play an instrumental role in increasing LMSAI’s presence in India through coordination with stakeholders in the region. Monika will also be working closely with the Harvard LMSAI office to support Harvard faculty visiting India, building partnerships with academic institutions and support ongoing Harvard faculty research and all endowed fellowships.

Understanding the World Through Art: Explore Vaishnavi Patil’s Research

Nov 16, 2022 | Announcements, Arts Program, Community, Graduate Student Associates, In Region, India, News

Understanding the World Through Art: Explore Vaishnavi Patil’s Research

Vaishnavi Patil, one of the Mittal Institute’s new Graduate Student Associates, is a doctoral candidate in Harvard’s History of Art and Architecture department working on South and Southeast Asia. Vaishnavi received her B.A. in Ancient Indian History and Culture from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and an MA in History of Art and Archaeology from SOAS, London. She was a Yenching scholar at Peking University, China, receiving an MA in China Studies. In addition to her studies, Vaishnavi has participated in numerous internships, including curatorial training at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Harvard Art Museums.
Vaishnavi is interested in studying female deities, especially mother goddesses, and how production, patronage, and development of religions play a role in the evolution of the mother goddess in South Asia. She is also interested in the text-to-image relationships in South Asian art, particularly the literal and the symbolic in the illustration of a text. Other areas of interest include popular practices, marginalized deities, depiction of evil, and gender issues. Her current research aims to analyze the origins and development of the cult of the mother goddess in South and Southeast Asia, particularly her representations and the popular practices centered on her.

Pakistan’s 75 Years of Independence: Previewing the November Conference

Nov 16, 2022 | Announcements, Community, Faculty, Fellows, In Region, News, Pakistan, South Asia in the News

Pakistan’s 75 Years of Independence: Previewing the November Conference

Yaqoob Khan Bangash is a historian of Modern South Asia and a current Fulbright Fellow at the Mittal Institute (read our Q&A with Dr. Bangash). He is also the coordinator of the upcoming event, “The Pakistan Conference: 75 Years of Independence,” November 29-30 at CGIS South.
The conference aims to bring a focused, though not exclusionary, lens to the study of the country and its 75 years since independence. It will provide the space to reflect upon the past, but also explore the lingering legacies and challenges that continue to cast a shadow over the country. We spoke with Yaqoob about his motivations behind the conference, and what attendees can expect.

“The Happiness Curriculum”: Richa Gupta Aims to Reach 30-million Young People by 2030

Nov 16, 2022 | Alumni, Announcements, In Region, News, South Asia in the News, Students

“The Happiness Curriculum”: Richa Gupta Aims to Reach 30-million Young People by 2030

Richa Gupta, GSE’21 and co-founder of the Labhya Foundation, has no shortage of ambitious goals. By 2030, she hopes to reach 30-million underserved children with a new “happiness curriculum” in some of the most unserved corners of India. The effort to bring social-emotional learning grew out of her own experiences on the frontlines as a teacher in under-resourced schools for more than a decade.

She and her co-founders, who also brought their life experiences to the founding, now run the Labhya Foundation and received a Mittal Institute Seed for Change grant to catalyze their efforts. Gupta was recently named one of 17 New Young Leaders for the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. We spoke with her about founding the organization, how the Seed for Change grant helped expand their efforts and what’s on the horizon.

Tania Saeed, LMSAI Marie Curie Fellow, Shares Her Work on Educational Systems in South Asia and Beyond

Nov 9, 2022 | Afghanistan, Announcements, Community, In Region, News, South Asia in the News

Tania Saeed, LMSAI Marie Curie Fellow, Shares Her Work on Educational Systems in South Asia and Beyond

Tania Saaed, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan, and Marie Curie fellow at Ca’Foscari University of Venice, Italy, recently arrived at Harvard as part of her Marie Curie Fellowship with LMSAI. Her work focuses on comparative and international education, from exploring Islamophobia and securitization in the context of universities in the U.K., to the increasing securitization of education in Pakistan, and across South Asia. She spoke with the Mittal Institute about her work and fellowship.