Join us for a talk by Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys Limited. Murthy is celebrated for his visionary leadership in shaping Infosys and India's emergence as a major player in the world's information technology sector. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, having steered Infosys since its inception in 1981 until his retirement in 2011.

In this public lecture, Murthy will discuss the intersection of effective public governance and entrepreneurship as key drivers of development. His theme, "Creating and Fostering a Culture of Innovation in Companies to Enhance National Prosperity," will draw on Infosys as a case study to illustrate how fostering innovation can benefit organizations and the prosperity of nations.

The talk is for all those interested in a deeper understanding of India's developmental journey through the eyes of an IT industry pioneer to participate.

This lecture is a part of the INDIA Conference 2023: India's Economy in a Changing Global Landscape, which will bring several distinguished economists, policymakers, and corporate leaders to Cornell's campus to delve into the state of India's economy and the challenges ahead.

In-person attendees in person are welcome to join us for coffee and informal conversation following the lecture.

Note: Registration is not required for in-person attendance.

Livestream

The lecture will be livestreamed. Register to join by livestream.

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The seminar series for fall 2023 explores the future of African land, agriculture and food, digging into the contestations, conflicting and converging visions from a wide range of perspectives. How might land be used, valued and lived in, across cities, rural communities, forests, deserts and grasslands on the continent in the future? Who is proposing different visions of land futures in Africa, what are the histories, politics, socio-cultural, environmental and economic implications of these potential visions? In one of the regions with the most youthful populations, how are young people considering possible futures? What are ways that land, agriculture and food systems could be resilient, healthy, ecological, thriving and just? Can there be a decolonial agriculture and food future in Africa that celebrates Indigenous and local foodways?

Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023 2:30pm Uris Hall G-08

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The full conference packet is available here.

We will also be hosting a screening of films from Laos alongside the Graduate Conference - click here for more details and a full schedule of films.

To attend virtually via Zoom, use the link here.

More details are also available on the conference website here.

The 26th SEAP Graduate Student Conference looks to the afterlives of sites, organisms, and rubble. Turning neither to fatalism nor triumphalism in the Capitalocene, we look instead to Southeast Asians who have repurposed spaces, ecologies, appetites, and objects. We seek out what thrives in the cracks. How have humans and other species made use of the detritus of colonial and postcolonial endeavors? How are Southeast Asians foraging and outliving a century of mass extinction? How have traditions of art, dance, gustation, and literature metabolized the projects that seek to harness them? And what queer slangs, yesteryear yearnings, and fungal footholds find purchase in the rubble? We explore these material overgrowths in art and architecture; as well as in the digital and social spheres. We look both to martyrs and survivors. We welcome the intrusive, the unruly, the wicked.

We invited abstracts which grapple with the promise of national projects and the local and floral animi which outgrow them. We acknowledged Southeast Asians who subvert extinction in disturbed landscapes, as well as those involved in the ongoing revolts of the Third World against the first.

We have considered an omnivorous panel of submissions: from the humanities and arts, from the life sciences, as well as from social disciplines and professional studies. Works of poetry, prose, performance, visual art, music, and short film were invited to apply.

The 26th SEAP Graduate Student Conference will be held in a hybrid format on March 1-3, 2024 at Cornell University’s George McT. Kahin Center for Advanced Research on Southeast Asia in Ithaca, New York and on Zoom.

Please direct any questions to seapgatty@cornell.edu.

Talk by Devika Singh Shekhewat

'Axom Deshor Bagisare Sowali' attempts to trace the history and memory of the migration of tea plantation workers in Assam through music. The session would focus on Folk songs and music of plantation communities of Assam and engage with Jhumur songs as oral histories of various communities and tribes brought to Assam by the colonial project of growing tea. The talk engages with the memory of indenture among tea plantation workers and places the workers' role in shaping the history and culture seen in folk songs and music. The history of plantations in Assam has often been told through the colonial archives; the talk attempts to shift the conversation by exploring how memory, history, and identity are kept alive through Jhumur music, songs, and oral histories, which live as testimonies of the lives of tea plantation workers of Assam. The talk also traces the gendered, cultural, social, and economic politics in the migration history, which produced the fractured positionality of women tea plantation workers in Assam. Jhumur songs hold an important place in history as an oral tradition that tells the story of a community that has been long forgotten and sidelined.

Devika Singh Shekhawat is a writer, educator, and researcher from India. Her research interests lie at the intersection of gender and labor studies, public health, migration studies, and developmental issues. She is currently a joint Visiting Fulbright Fellow at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the South Asia Program at Cornell University. Her research explores how health and labor operate in the tea plantations of Assam. Her work engages with the nature of work, the production process that affects the health of the worker, and the conditions for ailments and diseases created for the worker within the plantation economy. She has written on the history and memory of indenture in tea plantations in Assam and published her work on the Ecological Crisis of Shrimp Aquaculture and discourses of migration and infiltration in Coastal Odisha. Devika has been a part of multiple projects that study the rural public healthcare infrastructure, ecological conservation, and labor relations in northeast India. She completed her Masters in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and her undergraduate studies in History and Political Science from St. Stephens College, University of Delhi. Devika is a current PhD research scholar at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, New Delhi.

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies funds international graduate student research!

Research travel grants provide international travel support for graduate and professional students to conduct short-term research or fieldwork outside the United States. Global PhD Research Awards fund fieldwork for 9 to 12 months of dissertation research.

Contact einaudi_center@einaudi.cornell.edu for more information.

Register for the information session.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.