Past Events

Navigating Doctor-Patient Relationships in India

Through February 16, 2020
UChicago Center in Delhi

This two-day symposium seeks to better understand and examine the trust deficit in the doctor-patient relationship in India. The program will focus on building trust and building networks through a a series of discussions with patients’ rights groups, doctors, other healthcare practitioners, researchers, and policy makers.

Creating the Inclusive City: Urban Poverty and Policy Directions in India

5:30–7:00 pm
UChicago Center in Delhi

India is among the most rapidly urbanising countries in the world. Large scale migration from rural to urban areas is significantly transforming the urban landscape, cities are expanding, and new, planned cities are being developed by actors in both state and private sectors. Rapidly growing urban areas are both sites of opportunity and of challenge. They are engines of modernisation, economic growth, social innovation and cultural development and offer the potential to provide a higher quality of life for their residents. But they also face tremendous challenges in terms of infrastructure, affordable housing, social and cultural integration and promoting equity and inclusion in the context of increasing disparities in wealth and income.
 

Slum Clearance, Urban Restructuring, and (Re)Emergent Communities in Mumbai

10:00 am–4:30 pm
UChicago Center in Delhi

As part of a broader global process of urbanization, a number of cities around the world are engaged in bold urban restructuring efforts focused on eradicating slum areas and reshaping the urban landscape, in part in order to better compete as “global cities.” The city of Mumbai is in many ways emblematic of these efforts. Massive slum clearance and redevelopment efforts are underway in the service of expanding and upgrading the city’s infrastructure and opening space for corporate, commercial, and housing development. Foundational to this restructuring is the demolition of many of the city’s informal settlements and the resettlement of residents to newly built housing complexes. Although there has been a good deal of research about slum communities and the broad processes of urbanization and urban restructuring policy in Mumbai, there has been relatively less empirical research on the lived experiences of former slum dwellers post-resettlement or on the nature of the communities into which they have been moved. 

Limits of Archives: Mapping Urban Spaces in Modern South Asia

All day
Seminar Room 2, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

Modern cities and urban spaces have set unique challenges to archivists and archival practices globally. Archivists, in response, have reimagined their institutional mandates, articulated new categories, reconfigured their own internal hierarchies, learned methodologically from quotidian urban practices such as flânerie to understand and map urban formations. Engagements with archives have led to the articulation of new categories and such categories have critically informed the way we look at cities and suburban spaces. Archives thus underpin both modes of surveillance and resistance, and the agenda of research and agitation. However, self-reflexive archivists are acutely aware of the limits of their explanatory powers and this sense of lack has often pushed them to redesign the very material infrastructure of archives, and legislate new institutional norms of use and access. Consequently, these redefinitions have led archivists to engage with newer technologies and the emergent legal regimes that seek to govern them. Here, the local context comes to critically define an otherwise global phenomenon, and the registers of identitarian differences such as race, caste, gender, and class inflect and play on these processes.

The Indian Conservative: A History of Indian Right - Wing Thought

5:00–6:45 pm
UChicago Center in Delhi

Right-wing thought has a long and ancient tradition in India. In this book, Jaithirth Rao, University of Chicago Booth School of Business alum, and Founder, Mphasis, traces its history, explores its philosophical underpinnings and different manifestations, and defines it as conservatism – a philosophy that rejects radical, reactionary and utopian positions and argues for change that evolves gradually and peacefully, preserves features of the past that are constructive and worth cherishing, and believes in a minimalist state that protects individual liberties even as it promotes policies that work on the ground.

Climate Change and the Global Environment: Science and Interpretation

9:00 am–1:00 pm
La Martinere for Boys 11, Loudon street, Kolkata – 700017

The University of Chicago Center in Delhi in collaboration with La Martinere for Boys, Ashoka University and TCG Crest will be hosting a half day symposium on the above topic. The idea is to introduce to a young audience in Kolkata the science of climate change, its social implications, and the way the science has generated conversations across different disciplines including areas in the humanities.

TATA Steel Kolkata Literary Meet 2020

Through January 26, 2020
Kolkata

TATA Steel Kolkata Literary Meet provides a platform for a dialogue and intellectual exchange of views on contemporary issues. It brings together literary giants/authors from varied backgrounds for issue-based dialogues on a wide range of relevant topics. In 2020, UChicago Faculty Members Professors Bill Brown, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rachel DeWoskin, Benjamin Morgan, Dan Raeburn, and Vu Tran, will be speaking at the TATA Steel Kolkata Literary Meet at various sessions between January 22-26. 

TATA Steel Kolkata Literary Meet 2020 is held in association with Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata.

 

India-US Relations Today: Prospects and Challenges

4:30–7:00 pm
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti Bhawan

This panel discussion will examine and assess the current bilateral relationship between India and the United States. It will also consider the impact of the US Presidential election in 2020 and weigh the prospects and challenges for the future.

International Innovation Corps Cohort Training

Through January 17, 2020
UChicago Center in Delhi

International Innovation Corps (IIC), a program based at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, will conduct its training program for the 2020-2021 cohort of fellows at the Center. The IIC fellows will be working in teams on 12-month projects with the Indian Government and other key stakeholders tackling contemporary developmental challenges.

American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Fellows Conference

All day
UChicago Center in Delhi

This annual conference held in collaboration with American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) will bring together AIIS pre-doctoral Research Fellows pursuing archival and field research throughout India. The Fellows share reports on their ongoing projects, and also receive feedback from senior scholar-mentors. This rich celebration of emerging scholarship in a range of disciplines will, this year, include 12 Junior fellows of the AIIS.