Jinah Kim, SAI faculty grant recipient, recently visited an exhibition in Beijing featuring Indian art. “The exhibition reminds us of the age old connections between the two countries, notably activated and solidified through the transmission of Buddhism.”
On Dec. 22, SAI hosted a workshop in New Delhi in collaboration with Tata Trusts on women’s rights, with Dr. Ela Bhatt, Founder of SEWA, delivering the keynote address.
The 3-year program will focus on a different faculty-led topic of interest each year, and engage with scholars and practitioners both on the ground in Nepal and in Cambridge.
“Nothing can quite match the thrill of stumbling across a century-old document filled with often-juicy details of a disputed claim of a princely state,” writes Priyasha Saksena, SJD Candidate, Harvard Law School, who spent the summer conducting research for her doctoral dissertation on the relationship between international law and empire.
SAI has awarded grants to 15 students who will travel to India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Pakistan for research and internships.
Komal Shahid Khan, from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Meenakshi Sengupta, from Kolkata, India, attended classes, met with students and faculty, and displayed their work on campus. They also collaborated on an interactive performance piece about the Partition of India.
A recent working paper by Fauzia Ahmed, SAI Research Affiliate, explores the framework of gender, governance, and labor, at all levels of the global value chain: workers; factory owners; buyers; and consumers.
Asad Liaqat, SAI Graduate Associate, spent the summer working with The History Project in Lahore, Pakistan. He evaluated workshops aimed at improving critical thinking and increasing empathy in schoolchildren in Pakistan and India, especially towards historical narratives.
Jasmine Chia, Harvard College ’18, started her summer in Myanmar intending to study Vipassana Buddhism, but became fascinated with a different topic: a banking phenomenon that explains the links between capitalist religion and political engagement.
SAI is pleased to welcome Sanjay Kumar to the team as our India Country Director. He will lead all of SAI’s activities in India and will be based at our office in Delhi.