Meena Sonea Hewett, Executive Director of the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard (MI) has spent the past decade growing and cultivating the work of the Institute both at Harvard and across South Asia. Now, as she departs the University, we spoke with Meena about her past 10 years of service, and her most important achievements.
Satchit Balsari, Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Steering Committee member of the Mittal Institute, co-authored a comment in The Lancet on evidence-based, affordable interventions to manage COVID-19 in India. His co-authors include a range of other medical professionals: Zarir Udwadia, Department of Pulmonary Medicine, P.D. Hinduja Hospital and Medical Research Center, Mumbai, India (ZU); Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Breach Candy Hospitals & Research Centers, Mumbai, India; Ahmed Shaikh, Department of Emergency Medicine, New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, USA; Abdul Ghafur, Department of Infectious Diseases, Apollo Cancer Hospital, Chennai, India; and Sushila Kataria, Department of Internal Medicine, Medanta Hospital, Gurgaon, India.
The Mittal Institute recently concluded the 2020–2021 Visiting Artist Fellowship, which annually brings four mid-career visual artists to Cambridge to engage with Harvard faculty and students, participate in art exhibitions, and perform research using Harvard’s intellectual resources to further their art practice. Due to COVID-related programming changes this year, the fellowship was reimagined, bringing 13 of the top applicants from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal to the virtual world for a series of four online seminars curated to support the artists’ long-term practice. In these courses, the artists participated in thought-provoking discussions centering on art history, creative writing, urban design, and more, with both their peers and the expert facilitating the class. For the final installment of the VAF Lecture Series, the Mittal Institute welcomed Asim Waqif, a Delhi-based artist whose international work revolves around architecture, ecology and design.
Vaishnavi Patil, a Ph.D candidate in the Harvard Department of History of Art and Architecture, was a recipient of a Mittal Institute’s Winter 2020 Student Grant. Her digital humanities project brings together scholarship based on literature, numismatics and archaeological evidence to provide a comprehensive timeline for South Asian History. Read more about her endeavor in her own words.
The Swasth Alliance has announced the launch of a partnership of community-based organizations, frontline clinicians and leading scientists from India and the Indian diaspora to develop a community of practice committed to advancing evidence-based COVID-19 care, contextualized to rural India. The partnership, the Swasth Community Science Alliance (CSA), will provide a suite of timely clinical resources for use in rural and urban settings, all vetted for scientific accuracy.
Cultural anthropologist Abdul Razaque Channa, Ph.D. shares his research on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on learning among Pakistan’s school age children. Professor Channa is a Research Affiliate at the Mittal Institute and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Sindh – Jamshoro.
Hansong Li recently joined the Mittal Institute as a Graduate Student Associate for 2021-2022. He is a political scientist and intellectual historian in the Government Department at Harvard University. His research explores the languages and practices of interstate justice in South Asia, in comparison to East Asian and European traditions. As a Graduate Student Associate, Hansong will conduct further research on behalf of the Mittal Institute, focused on South Asia. The Mittal Institute sat down with Hansong to learn more about his background, his research motivations, and career aspirations.
In response to the alarming resurgence of COVID-19 in India, authors drawn from the The Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System and its network of fellows have proposed eight urgent recommendations in an article in The Lancet.
On May 13, the Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System held a joint webinar with the Lancet COVID-19 Commission India Task Force on “The COVID-19 Crisis in India: What is the Way Forward?” The webinar, the first in a new series, engaged academics, practitioners and the public about the recent COVID-19 pandemic surge in India. The discussion focused on the short and long-term actions that are needed to address the impact
With a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in India and Pakistan, the Mittal Institute’s annual Seed for Change competition aims to award Harvard students with grant prizes for interdisciplinary student projects that positively impact societal, economic, and environmental issues. Learn more about the funded projects.
In a conversation with the Mittal Institute this week, Naiza Khan, a visual artist who splits her time between London and Karachi, explored the impact of the pandemic on her creative processes and methods of making art. This past year, COVID-19 drastically changed the landscape of possibilities for modes of working and presented new opportunities to engage in making work alongside other artists.