Chase Van Amburg ‘24, an Integrative Biology concentrator who is also earning a concurrent Master’s degree in Applied Math, specializes in data science with a focus on climate change. This summer he received a grant from the Mittal Institute to begin work on “Mapping Heat in Microenvironments,” and he gave us a glimpse into the essence of his project.
Dr. P. Sivakami, an Indian Dalit author who predominately writes in Tamil across many genres of literature, recently spoke at Harvard in conversation with Professor Martha Selby, Sangam Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature Harvard University. She first began her career as an Indian Administrative Services officer and later as an author was the first Dalit woman to become a novelist. We spoke with Dr. Sivakami about her career as an author, governmental official, and politician.
This fall the Mittal Institute welcomed Anu Kottemkerry Antony as the new Raghunathan Family Fellow. Anu is a researcher whose scholarship focuses on the themes of subjectivity, women’s religious life and labor, everyday religiosity, and post-secular discourses in the context of Indian Christianity. She is formerly a visiting faculty member at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Tuljapur, India, and she shared what she looks forward to for her upcoming year at Harvard.
Palak Gupta, Mittal Institute Graduate Student Associate, is an architect from India, and a graduate student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Since her undergraduate studies at Academy of Architecture, Mumbai University, she has been involved in pedagogical and research conversations involving the communities vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and urbanization. We spoke with Palak to learn more about her research.
The conference was well attended both in-person and on Zoom and had an extremely engaged and interested audience. Each session had a Q&A session with both onsite and online participants engaged in discussion.
The Mittal Institute welcomed two new Visiting Artist Fellows, Cop Shiva and Garima Gupta, to campus for the start of their eight-week research fellowship at Harvard. The program allows mid-career visual artists from around South Asia to spend eight weeks on the Harvard campus. The VAF differs from a typical artist residency program in that it is research-centered, providing artists with the vast resources of Harvard’s intellectual community to enhance their artistic practice.
Cop and Garima share more about their artistic motivations below. And save the date to join them at the Mittal Institute’s Visiting Artist Fellows Art Exhibition on Tuesday, October 10, where they will share more of their work with our community.