Please join us for an invited talk by Prof. Alexey Kirichenko, generously co-sponsored by the Departments of Asian Studies, History and Philosophy; the South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Religious Studies Programs; and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly. The event is open to all interested, and special accommodations can be made for access upon request.

Alexey Kirichenko is an Assistant Professor at Moscow State University, Russia where he teaches courses related to Burma, Southeast Asia, Buddhism, and Asian history. His PhD focused on Burmese royal historiography. Since 2009, he is engaged in field and archival work in Burma aimed at manuscript cataloguing and digitization, documentation of archival practices, monastic networks and Buddhist monuments, and research on the history of Buddhism. He has published extensively on various aspects of Burmese history and historiography. His current writing priorities address the issues of religious identity and knowledge production.

Due to COVID-era regulations, all attendees are required to register for this event here: http://cglink.me/2ee/r992619

Upon registration you should receive an automated email with the Zoom link. If for any reason you do not receive this email, please contact Bruno at bms297@cornell.edu.

Register online to attend this event.

About the seminar series

The "Perspectives in International Development Seminar Series" is co-sponsored by the Department of Global Development, the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and the School of Integrative Plant Science as part of courses IARD 6960, NTRES 6960, PLSCS 6960 and AEM 6960. For additional questions, contact course teaching assistant Khusel Avirmed at ta346@cornell.edu.

Register online to attend this event.

One hundred million smallholder farmers in India and 500M across the world face a number of challenges toward achieving food and income security, which are increasingly exacerbated by climate change. Unpredictable rains, increasing temperatures and drought make farming less profitable, eventually net-negative if not mitigated. Many interventions have been developed to alleviate smallholder poverty, but most offer only incremental income increases. Kheyti designs and deploys a bold solution that increases smallholder income at unprecedented, significant rates that ensures long term resilience rather than short-term income generation. Kheyti’s work is designed to create a path out of poverty by deploying high tech greenhouses (often taken for granted in developed countries), to India’s smallholder farmers. The greenhouses (with farm services) are a bold idea that brings sweeping change - they TRIPLE farming income with little effort while enabling farmers to learn new agriculture skills and mitigate climate change in the long term. Kheyti’s dream is to restore dignity in the profession of farming for smallholders.

About the presenter

Sathya Raghu is the Co-founder and President of Kheyti and CosmosGreen, startups working to help small and marginal farmers rise out of poverty. He is a CA-turned-farmer and agri-entrepreneur. Sathya is a 2014 Acumen Fellow, a 2016 Aspen New Voices Fellow, and 2018 Rainer Arnhold Fellow. More information about Sathya is available at https://www.sathyaraghu.com/my-world/

About the seminar series

The "Perspectives in International Development Seminar Series" is co-sponsored by the Department of Global Development, the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and the School of Integrative Plant Science as part of courses IARD 6960, NTRES 6960, PLSCS 6960 and AEM 6960. For additional questions, contact course teaching assistant Khusel Avirmed at ta346@cornell.edu.

Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture Series

Ronit Ricci, Department of Asian Studies and Religion, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The small, Indian Ocean island known as Sarandib, Lanka, and Ceylon was a site of banishment throughout the 18th century for members of royal families, convicts, servants and others sent there from across the Indonesian archipelago. Descendants of these exiles who remained on the island continued to speak and write in Malay, the archipelago's lingua franca, and to adhere to a collective Muslim identity for several centuries and into the present. The talkconsiders if and how earlier religious and literary traditions of banishment tied to the island -those of Adam's fall from paradise to Sarandib and Sita's abduction to Lanka in the Ramayana -played a role in shaping the experiences of the exiles and their descendants.