Twelve students from Ashoka University have been selected for the prestigious Millennium Fellowship. The Fellowship, a collaboration between the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) and Millennium Campus Network (MCN), is a semester-long leadership development programme that convenes, challenges, and celebrates student leadership for UN goals. Read more... |
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Digital Learning during COVID-19 From March 16, the University conducted classes through Google Meet and Zoom, as per the on-campus timetable. Group discussions and peer learning also took place through virtual learning mode. Here, the faculty shared their experiences of online teaching during the pandemic. How they made it happen for the students and what the new students can expect going forward as the new semester has started with the orientation last week. |
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Ashoka University campus walk-through Since the news students couldn't get a glimpse of the physical campus, we brought the campus experience and the feeling of togetherness to them. |
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YSP Forum: New initiative from GESP for Adults! This year the Office of Global Education and Strategic Programmes (GESP) delivered a very successful online YSP 2020 which saw the participation of over 300 students. Like every year, the team received several requests from parents and school teachers for hosting a YSP-like programme for adults. Read more... |
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Events happened in August |
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CWC | Academic Bridge Programme As part of the Academic Bridge Programme from August 3 to August 21, 2020, the CWC successfully conducted academic classes that proposed to act as a bridge for incoming students to be acclimatised to the academic culture of Ashoka. The classes comprised activities that attempted to develop reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills of students and aimed to make them familiar with methods to think critically and articulate their ideas with precision and without hesitation in class. |
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ACWB in Orientation Week 1. Academic Bridge Programme orientation by ACWB - ACWB conducted an orientation programme and two workshops through the three week Academic Bridge Programme for the students to help them build on their well-being during these extraordinary times.These were conducted on August 04-05, August 10, and August 17, 2020. 2. MA Economics orientation - ACWB conducted a session on August 12 to orient the incoming students of MA Economics about ACWB, what the centre does, how to book appointments etc. 3. YIF orientation - ACWB conducted a session on August 13 to orient the incoming batch of the Young India Fellowship (YIF) about ACWB, what the centre does, how to book appointments etc. 4. RA and RA Mentors Training - Dr. Arvinder Singh, Director, ACWB, on August 18 gave training to both Resident Assistants (RA) and RA Mentors. 5. Cohort’s leader training & Parent Orientation - Dr. Arvinder Singh on August 20, 2020, gave training to the cohort's leader while on August 23, oriented the parents of the incoming undergraduate batch. 6. The Orientation Programme for the Undergraduate Class of 2023 - ACWB conducted a session on 'Transition to College' for the undergraduate batch on August 27. |
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CEDA | Published articles 1. Pulapre Balakrishnan’s (Professor of Economics) article on How to pay for the stimulus is published in The Hindu on August 06, 2020. 2. Ashwini Deshpande, Professor of Economics, with Rajesh Ramachandran published an article on Differential impact of COVID-19 and the lockdown in Hindustan Times and The Hindu. Another paper of hers on Caste inequalities in post-lockdown unemployment The Missing Millions of Migrants from Modi's Speech was covered by NewsClick. Her paper on the Gendered impact of Covid-19 lockdown covered extensively in the media. Some of that coverage are - Can COVID-19 change the work culture at home for men and women?, LiveMint, August 1, 2020 Coronavirus in India: Did men do more housework during lockdown? BBC News, August 12, 2020 When will the Indian male be truly ‘atmanirbhar’ at home?, Livemint, August 15, 2020 3. Bhaskar Dutta’s (Professor of Economics) article on Fighting the coronavirus: How to get vaccines speedily to people who need them, once one has been found is published in The Times of India on August 20, 2020. 4. Bharat Ramaswami, Dean, Academic Affairs, and Professor of Economics, with Maitreesh Ghatak and Ashok Kotwal, published an article on What Would Make India’s Growth Sustainable? in The India Forum on August 15, 2020. |
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Ashoka’s First online Summer Semester On August 14, Ashoka University successfully concluded its first ever semester planned and executed completely online. 22 unique courses were offered across various disciplines. This year the university also opened its summer courses to undergraduate students across colleges and universities in India. Read more... |
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The/Nudge Forum On August 15, CSIP Director Ingrid Srinath led the 1-2 p.m. session of The/Nudge Forum. This 24-hour event was hosted by The Nudge Foundation in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation and Skoll Foundation, as a platform for a global discussion on India's development agenda. CSIP's "In It Together" session brought together Amitabh Kant (CEO, NITI Aayog), Vani Kola (MD, Kalaari Capital), and Amitabh Behar (CEO, Oxfam India) to discuss how India's government, business, and civil society can work together for social impact. Watch the video here. |
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Framing Gender and Sexuality: Training for Workshop Facilitators Ashoka's Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) recruited and trained a group of 12 young professionals, students, and research scholars, who will be taking our workshops on gender, sexuality, law, and diversity to schools, colleges, and universities in different parts of the country. Soon, the workshops will be available in multiple regional languages. Date: August 16 - 23, 2020 |
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CWC Podcast episode 3 released Featuring CWC Director Kanika Singh, Senior Writing Fellow Jyotirmoy Talukdar, and Writing Tutor Ashwini Rajpoot, along with the hosts Souradeep and Uday, this episode of #BackToTheTutor delves into how different was it for the CWC team to teach in an online classroom post-Lockdown, and how did CWC manage this transition, especially in our ESL (English as Second Language) classes. |
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CWC Annual Report 2019-20 CWC released their Annual Report 2019-20. It is available for download here. |
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TCPD Annual Report 2019-20 TCPD released their Annual Report 2019-20. It is available for download here. |
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CWC | Student Interviews on YouTube In these interviews conducted for CWC's English Communication and Intermediate English Communication course classes - students engage in conversations about a range of things: their stories, their interests, academics, and life at Ashoka and in general. Check them here. |
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Beyond the Classroom goes Multilingual! ‘Beyond the Classroom’ (BTC) is Ashoka University’s attempt to explore a universe of interesting and relevant ideas, and bring them to an audience which loves to learn, in an accessible format. Semester 1 of BTC saw 12 seminars in subjects spanning from Philosophy to History and English to Biology. In each seminar a faculty member made an incursion into a topic from their research, bringing it to life through a live and interactive webinar. For more information, click here. |
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CSBC | Behaviourally Speaking Webinar: Leveraging the Power of Narratives to Change Complex Behaviours On August 20, 2020, the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC) hosted a webinar titled “Leveraging the Power of Narratives to Change Complex Behaviours". This was the third webinar hosted by the Centre as part of its #BehaviourallySpeaking series which aims to tackle pertinent questions in the field of behavioural science and its impact on knowledge, attitudes, and practices, globally and nationally. The webinar delved into the importance of Educational Entertainment (EE), or “edutainment”, as a crucial tool for social and behaviour change, foregrounding its theories, and highlighting its history, variety, scientific study, impact, and policy implications. Each of the five panelists, with vastly different engagement with the field, spoke to the topic from their experiences. This allowed the audience to engage with edutainment from multiple lenses, understanding it, at once, as a thoroughly scientific intervention, a deeply human experience, a simple medium of communication, and an opportunity for nations to address pressing development problems. Beyond the engaging speaker presentations, the audience participation through critical observations, commentary, and questions, added immense value to the discussion. |
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Some highlights from July |
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Enabling a Robust Policy-oriented and Technology-driven AI Ecosystem in India Ashoka University hosted a virtual workshop on Artificial Intelligence (AI) on July 17, 2020, featuring well-known academicians, policy experts, thought leaders from the industry, and practitioners. Watch the video here. |
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ACWB | Briefless ≠ Hopeless": Discussion on Mental Health and Well-Being Bar and Bench in collaboration with Ashoka Centre for Well-Being (ACWB) organised the discussion which saw a senior judge, a mental health expert, and lawyers come together. The webinar touched upon mental health issues that members of the legal fraternity are currently facing including many suicides within the legal community. This horrific news was accompanied by data on the number of lawyers who have left Delhi to go back to their native places. Dr. Arvinder Singh, Director, ACWB, with Delhi High Court’s Justice Manmohan, and Advocates Surya Rajappan and Gaurav Kumar, spoke on the theme 'Mental Health and Well-Being’. |
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Wellbeing during COVID Times ACWB jointly organised a webinar with Central University Kashmir for students, staff, and faculty of Central University Kashmir on the topic “Wellbeing during COVID Times”. |
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CSIP | Resilience Strategies for Nonprofits From July 27 to 29, 2020, Ashoka's Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy (CSIP) hosted Resilience Strategies for Nonprofits, an interactive workshop in partnership with Harvard Business School and Dasra, which enrolled 271 leaders from 158 NGOs across India. This 3-part certificate programme (5-7 p.m. each day) led participants through the process of reflecting on their COVID-19 response so far and reimagining the future for their organisations and communities in light of the pandemic's continued impact on funding and operations. Speakers included leaders from Apnalaya, ATE Chandra Foundation, Breakthrough India, The Bridgespan Group, CRY India, Jal Vakeel Foundation, Jan Sahas, Omidyar Network India, Quest Alliance, and Reap Benefit. For more information, click here. |
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YIF Writing Faculty | Paper published Prateek Paul's (Writing Faculty, Young India Fellowship) latest paper titled "Say Hello to Ambedkar: Understanding Dalit Consciousness through Ajay Navaria's Hindi Short Fiction" is published in South Asian Review. In this paper, Prateek Paul closely analyses Ajay Navaria's Hindi short stories to understand Dalit consciousness within Hindi literary discourse and the language politics of urban India. In doing so, he studies the revolutionary potential of Dalit literature as manifested in, both, its political and aesthetic sensibility. To read the full paper, click here. |
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Upcoming events in September |
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CSIP | Mother Teresa Fellowship CSIP will welcome its 2020-21 batch of Mother Teresa Fellows in early September. This will be the 8th cohort in the 18-month social impact fellowship, exclusively open to qualified Ashoka University graduates seeking social impact career paths. For more information, visit here. |
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CSIP | Resilience Strategies for Nonprofits Related to CSIP's recent Resilience Strategies for Nonprofits workshop, the programme fees are being donated to COVID-19 relief efforts, including an Ashoka University student initiative. |
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CSBC Dialogues: “Law and Leviathan: Redeeming the Administrative State” The CSBC Dialogues is a speaker series where we invite eminent and distinguished personalities. It is a discussion series where leaders from across disciplines and fields come together to discuss ideas intersecting across domains and on the frontiers of the knowledge horizon. In the upcoming CSBC Dialogues chat, we’ll have Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, and Cass R. Sunstein, Professor at Harvard University discuss the administrative reforms. The discussion will be facilitated by Dr. Pavan Mamidi, Director, CSBC. They will discuss how democracies across the world are witnessing an unprecedented degree of change in various spheres. From social to political and cultural. The relationship between the state and the citizen determines how these changes affect the core fabric of democratic institutions. However, there are several questions and challenges surrounding modern-day public law, such as those of accountability, legitimacy of office, limitations of power, or even that of the ‘deep state’. The modern-day public office faces several of these complex questions frequently, which warrants the question: How can the confidence in it be restored, and is there scope for redemption? Register here. Date: September 09, 2020 Time: 5:30 PM IST to 6:30 PM IST |
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Ashoka History Monsoon 2020 Webinar Series 2020 1. A talk on The Yogī or the Bhakta: Hanumān Worship in the Deccan (10th-14th Century CE) by Dr. Prachi Sharma, Independent Researcher. Date: September 09, 2020 Time: 1.40-2.45PM. 2. A talk on Rethinking the Histories of Rural Development: Satellite Broadcasting and Managerialism in Western India, 1960s-1970s by Dr. Kena Wani, Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Göttingen’s ICAS-MP programme. Date: September 23, 2020 Time: 1.40-2.45PM |
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CSIP Research Fellowship The CSIP Application period for the new CSIP Research Fellowship closes Sept. 10, 2020. Individual and group researchers are encouraged to apply for this opportunity to help expand knowledge of Indian philanthropy and giving trends. For more information, visit here. |
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ILSS Fundraising Program CSIP Director Ingrid Srinath is among the faculty and speakers for the new ILSS Fundraising Program, a 5-month course beginning September 19, 2020. The students (30-40 anticipated) are predominantly founders and fundraisers of small and mid-sized nonprofit organisations. Her sessions will be "The Fundraising Landscape in India: A Bird's Eye View" (on September 27) and "Creating the Right Fundraising Portfolio" (on September 28). More information can be found here. |
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By the Office of Communications and Media Relations |
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