Each year, the Mittal Institute supports faculty-led research projects that bring together scholars from diverse disciplines and regions, all focused on themes relevant to South Asia. We are delighted to announce this year’s grant recipients.
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.
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.
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.