As climate change intensifies, extreme weather events—especially heatwaves—are placing growing pressure on India’s healthcare system. To better understand these challenges, the project “Climate Change, Health Security, and Emergency Care in India: An Exploratory Evaluation” was launched with support from a Mittal Institute grant.
The Mittal Institute welcomes Professor Nasir Uddin, a Visiting Scholar from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh, where he is a senior faculty member. He is a cultural anthropologist who will be working in our offices through mid-summer on a theoretical, comparative and ethnographic understanding of the “politics of genocide denial.” We spoke with Professor Nasir Uddin to learn more about his research.
Focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, the Mittal Institute’s annual Seed for Change (SFC) competition awards funding to bold, creative ideas developed by Harvard students with the potential to drive meaningful impact in India. Meet this year’s grand prize winner, The Paal, who is working to empower smallholder farmers, particularly women, to own insured, high-quality cattle by turning livestock into a retail investment asset class.
Each semester, the Mittal Institute offers grants to Harvard students to further their research, language study, or internship opportunities. This coming summer 2025, 12 students were awarded grants to carry out projects across five countries. Their work spans a wide range of topics, from examining antibiotic access in India, to studying death and dying in Tibetan Buddhism, to immersing themselves in the languages of Pashto, Sanskrit, and Tamil.
Shivangi Chopra, a Master in Public Administration in International Development candidate at Harvard Kennedy School, spent this past winter in New Delhi, India, designing and implementing a culturally sensitive breast cancer awareness curriculum for adolescent girls in government schools.
Saravanan Thangarajan, Master of Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery Candidate at Harvard Medical School, traveled to Tamil Nadu this winter to explore the impact of climate change on maternal and infant health. Supported by a Mittal Institute Winter Research Grant, he interviewed mothers struggling to protect their children from heat, air pollution, and other environmental stressors. Below, Saravanan shares findings from his research and how the experience will impact his future academic path.
Pre-Texts is an arts-based training program that promotes literacy, critical thinking, and citizenship by having students interpret teaching through creative expression. Developed by Harvard’s Doris Sommer, Mittal Institute steering committee member and the Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, it’s now active in South Asia, aligning with India’s mandate for arts-integrated education and helping teachers put policy into practice.
To kick off this year’s Annual Symposium focused on media, climate, and arts, the Mittal Institute hosted a special Harish C. Mahindra Evening on Thursday, April 17. The evening featured Tarun Khanna, Mittal Institute Faculty Director; William C. Kirby, former Fairbank Center Director; and Arthur Kleinman, former Asia Center director. In conversation with each other, they discussed the Mittal Institute’s 15-year journey to increase Harvard’s presence in Asia, the extraordinary leadership of Tarun Khanna, and the differences between the Mittal Institute and other international centers at Harvard.
Last week, the Mittal Institute was honored to host Naiza Khan, a renowned artist from Pakistan, as the Institute’s second Distinguished Artist Fellow. In a lecture on campus on April 14—co-hosted by the MFA Boston—Khan presented her powerful work that weaves together themes of land, body, and memory through drawing, sculpture, archival material, and film.
Kumbh Mela, one of the largest human gatherings on the planet, is a monumental Hindu pilgrimage and religious festival held in India every 12 years. An even more rare and significant version, the “Maha Kumbh Mela,” occurs just once every 144 years—the most recent taking place in February 2025. Tiona Zuzul, who also attended the recent Maha Kumbh Mela, shared a dispatch from her experience in the Mittal Institute.
In advance of the Mittal Institute’s major New Delhi conference last month, “India 2047: Building a Climate-Resilient Future,” a group of nearly two dozen Harvard faculty, affiliates, and climate philanthropists spent two days on an extreme heat immersion trip in the city of Ahmedabad, India. The two days provided unique opportunities to dive more deeply into heat adaptation policies and practices in India, both centuries-old and modern.
From March 19-22, more than 180 scholars and experts from Harvard and around the world gathered in New Delhi, India, for one of the largest events Harvard has ever hosted outside the United States. Leading experts in climate science, public health, medicine, labor, business, agriculture, and urban planning convened for “India 2047 – Building a Climate-Resilient Future,” a series of interdisciplinary dialogues on advancing climate resilience.