This winter, the traveling exhibition, “The Architectures of Transition – Emerging Practices in South Asia” began its journey across South Asia. It displays the works of 41 emergent architecture practices in South Asia that have engaged in the making of architecture, landscape, and infrastructure in the public realm.
For the past seven years, the India Digital Health Net (IDHN)—an interdisciplinary team of experts from medicine, computer science, data science, and law based at Harvard and in India–has contributed to shaping India’s evolving digital health ecosystem. This year, IDHN achieved two significant milestones. In the essay below, Dr. Verghese Thomas, Assistant Professor of Research in the Division of Medical Informatics at St. John’s Research Institute and Associate of the Mittal Institute, provides further insights.
The Mittal Institute is pleased to announce its first recipients of the Faculty Climate Research Grants. These grants are designed to foster deeper scholarly engagement on climate change, catalyze the creation of new knowledge, and contribute to the development of sustainable solutions across South Asia. Projects focused on three main research categories: energy transition and energy policy; food systems, agriculture, and land use; and law and policy for climate transition and adaptation.
This academic year, 17 Harvard faculty have joined the Mittal Institute Climate Platform as new affiliates, greatly increasing the platform’s reach and expertise.
In the fall semester of 2024, the Mittal Institute started hosting Climate Dialogues, a series of closed-door events centering South Asia in the climate change conversation. The talks feature Harvard faculty speakers from across the University in an informal environment that includes a dinner. They enable faculty, as well as affiliates of the Mittal Institute Climate Platform, to engage in interdisciplinary dialogues and forge connections and research collaborations.
The Mittal Institute is excited to announce the release of the 2023–24 Year in Review and 2023–24 Arts Program reports. Like every year, the comprehensive Year in Review Report includes updates on all major faculty-led programs, lists awards and fellowships, highlights the work of students, student organizations, and scholars, and summarizes events and other achievements. The Arts Program Report highlights the incredible impact and accomplishments of the Mittal Institute’s various arts initiatives, which include fellowships, exhibitions, and events. Both reports offer valuable insights into the institute’s mission of connecting Harvard with South Asia.
In 1970, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was hit by a cyclone that killed 300,000 to 500,000 people. Prof. Mushfiq Mobarak, Yale University, and Prof. Sultan Mehmood, New Economic School of Moscow, provide empirical evidence that the cyclone’s devastation and the Pakistani government’s “callous response” to it were instrumental in galvanizing support for an independence movement. The two authors share their work in this Q+A ahead of a November 15 Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics.
The Mittal Institute invites Harvard faculty from across the university to apply for funding for research related to any of the countries we work with in South Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and/or Sri Lanka. This opportunity is open to all Harvard University faculty members. Applications are due on December 13, 2024.
In an essay for the 1800 Histories project based at the Harvard Center for History and Economics, which explores the local conditions at key sites that play a disproportionate role in methane emissions, WIEGO founder and Mittal Institute Steering Committee member Martha Chen writes about the impact waste pickers have on methane emissions in Delhi, India.
The project “The History of Punishment in India,” led by Adaner Usmani, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, explores the paradox of low violence rates in India despite limited policing and high poverty.
The Mittal Institute is excited to announce a new funding opportunity for faculty research on climate change in South Asia in the academic year 2024-2025. Harvard faculty members from any Harvard School are invited to propose impactful climate research projects or interdisciplinary collaboration through workshops that address the critical challenges of climate change in the region.