Research Groups and Projects
Groups
South Asian Studies Group : http://sydney.edu.au/business/research/SASG
Projects
Masculinities and Violence in Indonesia and India
An AUSAID Australian Development Research Project conducted by Dr Alex Broom.
Traceability as a Mode of Ordering
An Australian Research Council project into the restructuring of tropical product supply chains in India and Indonesia (2004-08) conducted by Associate Professor Bill Pritchard (chief investigator) and Dr Jeffrey Neilson (Post-doctoral research fellow).
Indian agriculture in the 21st century: The political economy of market reforms
An Australian Research Council Discovery Project into the social and economic implications of the liberalization of Indian agriculture conducted by Associate Professor Bill Pritchard and Professor John Connell (chief investigators), Dr Jeffrey Neilson (research affiliate) and Ms Jasmine Glover (postgraduate student).
Announcements
Australia-India Institute Special Seminar
The handbag that exploded: Mayawati’s monuments and the aesthetics of democracy in post-reform India
Friday 12pm, 27 August
University of New South Wales, Morven Brown 308B
Professor Kajri Jain, University of Toronto
Ever since the Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati came into power as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh she has been at the centre of media controversy, most recently because of her massive drive to build monuments and statues of ‘Dalit icons’, including, notoriously, statues of herself holding her trademark handbag. The media coverage so far has repeatedly staged the controversy in terms of a rudimentary version of the ‘recognition versus redistribution’ debate, representing majority public opinion as ‘infuriated and sickened’ (according to NDTV’s Prannoy Roy) at her profligate waste of public money on party propaganda and ‘self-aggrandizement’ rather than the material betterment of her constituency. To this opinion, propounded by right and left alike, is opposed the (almost exclusively Dalit) defence that Dalits have a legitimate claim to being represented in the same forms that have hitherto been available to others. In all this discussion, very little attention has been paid to the aesthetics and formal vocabularies of these monuments and statues, or to the genealogies of practice within which they are embedded and/or that they seek to reconfigure: uses of space, forms of iconopraxis, social violence, and indeed the very habitus of bodies structured by caste (hence, for instance, the heat generated by the handbag). This paper seeks to tease out some of these aspects, drawing on Jacques Ranciere’s formulation of aesthetics as a ‘distribution of the sensible’ that has a profoundly political salience. Here aesthetic redistribution, in this case, the emergence of new forms of Dalit cultural expression – is neither merely symbolic nor essentially economic, but material/sensible in ways that speak to both culture and economy.
For further details and to RSVP for catering purposes (by August 23) please contact Dr Kama Maclean:
Australia-India Strategic Research Fund Round 5
The opening of the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) Round 5, initially scheduled for 11 August 2010, has been postponed until further notice.
The reason for this is the upcoming election and the caretaker conventions that applies during the election campaign. Because every general election carries the possibility of a change of government, the incumbent Government is unable to be held accountable for its decisions in the normal manner. During this period, the Government follows a series of practices known as the caretaker conventions which aim to ensure that their actions do not bind an incoming government or limit its freedom of action.
Details on the opening of Round 5 will be published on the AISRF website https://grants.innovation.gov.au/AISRF/Pages/Guidelines.aspx after the result of the election are known. The Grand Challenge Fund is still under development and guidelines for this component will be available at a later date through the AISRF website.
Despite this postponement, it is advisable for potential applicants to start organising Indian partners in preparation of submitting an application. Applications will be made using the AISRF online application system, and no applications will be accepted after the closing time (no exceptions). The round is expected to remain open for 6 to 8 weeks.
Submission of applications will be the responsibility of each individual applicant, however the Office of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International) is available to give advice.
For further details, please contact Thomas Roem, Project Coordinator International Research Grants, RIAP:
Call for Research participants of South Asian and Caucasian Ancestry for Public Health Project
Mr Vidya Perera is undertaking a PhD in the Faculty of Pharmacy is based at the Pharmacy Aged Care Research Lab at Concord Repatriation General Hospital, conducting a large scale population study looking at ethnic differences in drug metabolism (focusing on differences between people of European and South Asian ancestry). The study is non-invasive involving collecting two saliva samples and taking an oral dose of caffeine (100mg). Due to its non-invasiveness the study is trying to sample a large range of participants (nearly 1000).
Mr Perera is seeking participants of of SOUTH ASIAN or European (Caucasian/Australian) ancestry to take part in his study. For general information on the study download the Population Study Poster, the specific information for volunteers and instructions for taking samples.
If you are interested in being involved or know of colleagues or students who might like to, please contact:
Vidya Perera
phone: +61 2 9767 6586
The Gyan (Knowledge) Network
The Gyan Network is run under the auspices of the Indian High Commissioner to Australia, Sujatha Singh. The Gyan Network is a database being put together of academics of South Asian origin working in Australia. Details can be found on the Indian High Commissions’ website here:
http://hcindia-au.org/gyan_index.html
http://hcindia-au.org/gyan_overview.html
Joint Education statement between India and Australia
On April 10, 2010, a Joint Ministerial Statement was signed by by the Indian Minister for Human Resource Development, Mr Kapil Sibal and the then Education Minister, Ms Julia Gillard. The Joint Statement was signed during Mr Sibal’s visit to Australia and especially addresses Education exchange between Australia and India through a formal arrangement between the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations of the Government of Australia and the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India.