Looking to fund your research, internship, or language study in South Asia this winter? Applications to our graduate and undergraduate grants are open for Winter 2019! Be sure to apply by Friday, October 11, 2019 at 11:59 PM.
Bangladesh has a complicated history, existing under many names and empires — sometimes independently, other times as a colony or kingdom. Its borders have been drawn and redrawn extensively over the past 4,000 years. At different points in its history, this small section of South Asia repelled Greek invaders, housed a series of Indian dynasties, was conquered by an Islamic empire, supported multiple Hindu kingdoms, was colonized by Europe, and regained its independence as a modern nation.
Our latest group of Visiting Artist Fellows for the Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 semesters has been chosen! Selected from a vast group of applicants, our new artists come from India, Nepal, and Pakistan, and their work represents a multitude of artistic mediums. From the exploration of the human condition to a focus on racial and social identity, our Visiting Artist Fellows plan to spend their time at Harvard researching their interest areas and connecting with faculty, students, and the community to expand on their individual art practices.
Planning out your Fall schedule? One class you won’t want to miss out on is Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social & Economic Problems (GENED 1011), now available to students at Harvard College and Harvard graduate schools. [HBS 1266, GSE A-819, HLS 2543, HKS DEV-338, GSD SES-5375. Others may cross-register]. Meeting Mondays and Wednesdays (3:00–4:15 PM, Sever Hall 113), the class is taught by Professors Tarun Khanna (HBS), Satchit Balsari (HMS, HSPH), Krzysztof Gajos (SEAS), Rahul Mehrotra (GSD), and Doris Sommer (FAS). Through the semester, students will examine salient economic and social problems of the developing world through the entrepreneurial lenses of the artist, scientist, and planner; each theme taught by one of the professors above.
Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social & Economic Problems will be available to Harvard College, FAS, GSAS, HBS, HGSE, HKS, and HLS students. This course provides a framework (and multiple lenses) through which to think about the salient economic and social problems of the developing world.
India’s National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB) illustrates yet another example of the Government of India moving forward with a major health digitization program that will affect millions of citizens. However, data researchers, academics, and activists have expressed some concerns about the development of this policy, bringing up fears of security breaches and privacy controls.
The Mittal Institute’s 1947 Partition of British India project seeks to unravel the history behind one of the world’s largest forced migration events, allowing us to understand the implications of mass dislocations across geographies. Despite the amount of established historical and political scholarship on the Partition, there is still much to uncover through oral accounts from minority groups within India — specifically, from Muslim families who did not migrate to Pakistan.
The Building Bharat-Boston Biosciences (B4) Program, run by the Mittal Institute and funded by the Department of Biotechnology within the Government of India, aims to connect the scientific institutions of India and Boston to collaborate, share research, and build new knowledge in the field of biosciences. As part of the program, the Mittal Institute brings five scientific fellows from India to Cambridge to work in labs with faculty mentors across Harvard University and other local institutions. This week, our five visiting B4 fellows and some of their mentors came together over a lunch hosted by the Mittal Institute with Professor Venkatesh Murthy, faculty lead of the B4 program and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, to kick off the B4 fellowship.
Listen to our latest podcast featuring Gautama Vajracharya from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in a lecture on the ceremonial purposes of the lunar calendar, entitled “Newar Ritual Calendar — New Methodology, New Discovery.”
A teaching fellow is needed for the course Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social and Economic Problems for the Fall 2019 semester. This is a university-wide course jointly offered with FAS, GSAS, HBS, HGSE, HKS, HLS, and HSPH, coordinated by Professors Tarun Khanna (HBS) and Satchit Balsari (HMS, HSPH), and co-taught by several other faculty from around the university.
Applications are now being accepted for the next Crossroads Emerging Leaders Program! For the past few years, the Mittal Institute has teamed up with the Harvard Business School Club of the GCC to facilitate a multi-day program that brings university students from Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East to Dubai to learn from Harvard professors in an intensive, multidisciplinary classroom-based program. Now, the in-region program will be accepting applicants from Latin America, too! In addition to the in-person classes in Dubai, the newest installment of the Crossroads Program will also include curated online courses via a digital learning platform, providing applicants with online courses they can complete within a specific timeframe. These online courses will also be available to student applicants from the United States.
The rural community of Pind Begwal, Pakistan, lies just 20 miles from the capital city of Islamabad. But throughout the community, medical infrastructure remains limited, only assuaged by a small, dilapidated health center that suffers from regular doctor absenteeism. Last year, a team by the name of Saving 9 participated in the Mittal Institute’s Seed for Change competition, earning a grant to help launch their Community Aid and Response in Emergencies (CARE) project in Pind Begwal. In September 2018, the team launched the program, their goal to create a robust system that would provide emergency medical treatment to a community that has limited access to healthcare.