Two weeks ago, Srijan received an email that created a wave of smiles all around. He had just been awarded the globally recognised Graduate Research Excellent Grant – RC Lewontin Early Award by one of the apex evolutionary biology societies in the world, Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE). Sharing his exhilaration, Srijan said, “It feels great to win such an award at an early stage of my research career. Being the first India-based PhD student to win this award since its inception in 2018, makes it even more special.” Read more... |
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Future of Work: Shaping the Organisations of the Future Ashoka University, in association with Harvard Business School India Research Center, Harvard Business Publishing, FICCI, NHRD, YourStory, TiE Delhi, CII, and NASSCOM organised the “Future of Work: Shaping the Organisations of the Future” conference on June 27, 2020. Read more... |
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Arvind Subramanian joins Ashoka as a Professor of Economics Former Chief Economic Adviser to the GOI, Subramanian joins Ashoka as a Professor in the Department of Economics. He will also be the Founding Director of the new Ashoka Center for Economic Policy which will be devoted to doing research and analysis on policy issues related to India and global development. Read more... |
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AshokaX - The Academy AshokaX is an online collection of remarkable academics curated from across the world to teach, engage, and debate with learners across geographies. It furthers Ashoka University’s mission to be inclusive, innovative, and diverse in its offerings. Read more... |
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The Republic of Letters Ashoka's The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the face of India’s higher education sector. The situation is unlikely to go back to what it was. As the leader of your institution, how are you preparing for tomorrow? In the 17th century, a group of scholars from Europe and America came together to facilitate the dissemination of ideas. Known as The Republic of Letters, the group worked long-distance to stimulate critical thinking in all areas of learning. In 2020, Ashoka University and Harappa Education came together to create a virtual Republic of Letters for higher education leaders who see the pandemic as an opportunity to reshape how we teach and learn, for a three-day conference, started on June 24. It included top global experts, Vice-Chancellors, Directors, and Principals of India’s most premier educational institutions, as well as policy-makers and thinkers. Know more about it here. |
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Ashoka University opens its Summer Courses The Office of Summer Programmes at Ashoka University offers an intensive six-week study programme, during the summer, for undergraduate students from across academic institutions, held online this year. A range of four-credit courses is offered in various disciplines. The deadline to apply was June 18. Read more... |
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Future of Schools: Overcoming the COVID-19 Challenge and Beyond Ashoka University hosted a two-day virtual conference with educators, school owners, principals, and global experts to discuss solutions to issues created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The two-day online conference is focused on issues brought to the fore by the current situation and evolve solutions to improve the gamut of K-12 education in India. It was addressed by eminent keynote speakers like Nandan Nilekani, co-founder, Infosys and EkStep Foundation; Anita Karwal, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy; Deepak Parekh, Chairman of HDFC; Salman Khan, Founder, and CEO, Khan Academy; Bridget T Long, Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education and Manoj Ahuja, Chairman, CBSE. |
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The Young India Fellowship Launches Final Draft: Issue 2 Ashoka's The second issue of Final Draft: A Journal of the YIF Critical Writing, containing some of the best papers from the 2017–18 batch of the YIF, was launched on 7 June 2020. The goal of the journal is to showcase both the range—in topic and genre—and strength of writing in a student body that is itself highly diverse in terms of its educational, disciplinary, professional, geographic, linguistic, and socio-economic backgrounds. In Final Draft, the Critical Writing Programme hopes to give the readers a glimpse into some of the styles and voices that young students have evolved, the concerns and ideas that they have explored, and the seriousness of their engagement with writing. Click here to view Final Draft: Issue 2 (May 2020). |
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OLS | Neurodiversity Initiative As a liberal space that values each individual as a significant entity in enriching the educational experience on campus, inclusion, and diversity are significant values of the Ashokan ethos. The human brain is a fascinating entity and Ashoka is a place shared by diverse minds. With the primary goal to cultivate a culture of acceptance towards the diverse minds that encompass our campus, the Office of Learning Support (OLS), launched the “Neurodiversity Initiative”, along with a group of interns, in the month of June. As a part of this initiative, the team is conducting a social media campaign through the Instagram page and weekly summer updates to the campus. The initiative uses a neurodiversity approach to understand various disabilities and focuses on the need for us to move beyond the realm of “pathology” and “deficits”, and start recognising the strengths; hence, giving a balanced view of perspective towards disabilities. |
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Centre for Writing and Communication (CWC) Senior Writing Fellow Jyotirmoy Talukdar published an article "“Cinema Will Help Us Survive”: Five Assamese Filmmakers on the COVID-19 Crisis" in Eleventh Column on June 08. You can read it here. |
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CWC | Online Summer School CWC conducted it's Online Summer School 2020 in Creative Writing on June 08 which went till June 11 and in Research Writing which started from June 15 and went till June 18. |
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CSBC | Healthcare Beyond Covid Pooja Haldea, Senior Advisor, CSBC informs us about the health crisis we are sitting on which is not just COVID-19 and shares behavioural insights to mitigate the impact on demand for other healthcare services during the pandemic. Her co-author is Vrishali Shekhar, Consultant at The World Bank. Click here to read it. |
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CSBC | Prioritize healthy behaviour to quell Covid-19 Responsibility to practise protective behaviours shifts from the government to the individuals as lockdown opens. CSBC Director, Pavan Mamidi and Senior Adviser, Pooja Haldea share how people can be encouraged to practice these behaviours and create new #socialnorms, even at personal cost. Click here to read it. |
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CWC | Article Published CWC Writing Tutor Uday Kanungo's two articles and a short story got published. 1. The first article "Interview with Bhaskar Hazarika on his film Aamis" was published in the journal The East Wind Journal. 2. The second, a short story "My Time at Boyonika" was published in The Bombay Review. 3. The third article titled "Language Man of Lucknow" was published in The Hindu. |
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CWC | Article Published CWC Writing Tutor Souradeep Roy's translations 'Babanda and stars in the sky' (Bhaskar Majumdar) and 'Shikhandi's Complaint' (Mohammed Mominul Islam) published in the poetry anthology 'The World That Belongs To Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry From South Asia' Edited by Aditi Angiras and Akhil Katyal and published by Harper Collins. |
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CWC | Insular Poetry CWC organised 'Insular Poetry': Online Workshop on Reading and Writing Imagist Poetry on June 20, conducted by Shantam Goyal. |
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CSBC | Navigating the New Normal Campaign Launch NITI Aayog launched the behaviour change campaign ‘Navigating the New Normal’ on June 25. Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC), Ashoka University in partnership with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), India, and McCann Worldgroup India, is proud to have developed the campaign that advocates for COVID-safe behaviour norms during the unlock phase. The campaign was launched in the presence of NITI Aayog Member Dr. VK Paul, CEO Amitabh Kant, Principal Scientific Adviser Prof K Vijayraghavan, NITI Aayog Adviser Alok Kumar, BMGF Country Director Hari Menon, noted lyricist and CEO and CCO of McCann Worldgroup India Prasoon Joshi. Senior officials of NITI Aayog, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and BMGF were also present. As many as 92,000 NGOs and civil society organisations (CSOs) working with NITI Aayog too participated in the virtual launch. The campaign consists of two parts. The first is a web portal, containing resources informed by behavioural science. The website is developed by CSBC with BMGF India, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), and the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) and contains easy compliance strategies and collaterals to make public spaces safe, as we unlock and resume regular activities amidst the virus. The second part is a nationwide, transmedia campaign focussed on mask-wearing. It places children in the centre as enforcers of the New Normal ways with a catchy jingle ‘Mask nahi toh tokenge, Corona ko rokenge’. |
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Ashoka's Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) summer webinar series, titled, "Summer of ISHQ" is an expansion of the Centre's flagship speaker series, ISHQ: Issues in Society, History and Queerness. ISHQ is an acronym dear to our hearts because it translates as “love,” “desire,” “passion” across the languages of Urdu and Hindi. Over the years, the series has been a platform that has put thinkers, scholars and activists in conversation with one another as they address a range of issues like intimacy, feminism, inequality, desire, resistance, religion and identity. In our summer edition, we hope to bring together an illustrious group of thinkers who can have conversations across borders as they engage with an international audience. |
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By the Office of Communications and Media Relations |
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