M.S. Merian-R. Tagore Centre:

Focus of the Merian Centre is on political aspects of historiography, industrial relations, movements for the renewal of democratic systems, norm conflicts, gender relations, and growth and distribution.

Agenda

CV Scientific Advisors

Dr. Laila Abu-Er-Rub

Postition: Scientific Manager/ Academic Coordinator
Contact Details: abu-er-rub@mwsindia.org
Current Institution: M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’ (ICAS:MP) Max Weber Stiftung, India Branch Office

Cooperation India-Germany:
Laila holds a PhD in Visual and Media Anthropology from Heidelberg University. Her thesis revolved around fashion and body ideals in India after the economic liberalisation. Before becoming the Academic Coordinator of ICAS:MP in New Delhi in 2017, she coordinated the Research Area ‘Public Spheres’ at Heidelberg University’s DFG-funded Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’ (2012-2017) and the EU-funded HERA SINGLE project ‘Creating the “New Asian Woman” – Entanglements of Urban Space, Cultural Encounters and Gendered Identities in Shanghai and Delhi’ (2013-2016).

Synapsis of Research Activities:
Laila has been facilitating Indo-German research as project manager or coordinator since 14 years. Presently, she only has a small personal research project that she pursues as a hobby. She is working on creating an image archive of the women’s movement in Delhi (1980-2000) based on the works of the Indian artist Sheba Chhachhi.

Sneha Lamba

Position: Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Universtiy of Göttingen
Contact Details: email: sneha.lamba@uni-goettingen.de
Current Institution: Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Universtiy of Göttingen

Synopsis of Research Activities:
Sneha is an economist and demographer whose research lies in the fields of global health, development, and gender, with a focus on South Asia. Her overarching research agenda is concerned with studying how gender norms affect health outcomes — especially for women and children residing in countries of the global South. Sneha has considerable fieldwork experience carrying out surveys at the household, health facility, and health worker levels to improve health and sanitation outcomes in India and Bangladesh. She completed her PhD from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her PhD dissertation studied whether access to free daycare affects gender division of labor within the household in Bangladesh.

Participants List

Scientific concept

Working Group: Humanities and Social Sciences

This panel aims to showcase successful past collaborations between India and Germany in the Humanities and Social Sciences and evaluate future opportunities for fruitful cooperation. Panel participants come from projects and institutions with a long-standing history of research on and with India.

ICAS:MP is one of the five BMBF-funded Maria Sibylla Merian Centres that have produced remarkable research outcomes across several fields. With over 80 permanently associated scholars from India and Germany, ICAS:MP stands as the largest Indo-German collaboration in the Humanities and Social Sciences within India. Based in New Delhi, the Centre of Advanced Study has awarded numerous residential fellowships to outstanding researchers worldwide since its inception in 2015. All Merian Centres are located in the ‘Global South’ and have the aim to i) internationalise German Humanities and Social Sciences, ii) establish a South-South dialogue by creating links between the centres, and iii) challenge the US and Anglo-centrism in related research fields.

The Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) is a world-class centre for research and teaching on India. CeMIS stands out for its interdisciplinary approach, thematic focus on difference and inequality in contemporary society, and a vast range of intellectual and institutional resources, making it unique among Indian Studies centres in Germany and across Europe. It was set up at the University of Göttingen with funding from the state of Lower Saxony. Resident scholars at CeMIS and those visiting academics work on social, economic, political, and cultural developments in the Indian subcontinent. CeMIS professors come from diverse disciplines, including anthropology, development economics, history, political science, and religious studies.

As the host for our site visit, the South Asia Institute (SAI) in Heidelberg is one of the most important institutions for studying South Asia in Europe. The SAI was established in 1962 as an interdisciplinary centre for research and teaching on South Asia in the fields of development economics, ethnology, geography, history of South Asia, cultural and religious history of South Asia (classical Indology), modern South Asian studies (modern Indology) and Political Science of South Asia. It is located in the Centre for Asian Transcultural Studies (CATS) at Heidelberg University. The CATS has the aim to study Asia within a global context.

The working group comprises scholars from diverse fields, including development economics, history, anthropology, and political science, and will explore the following questions:

1) The centrality of humanities and social sciences in identifying and addressing complex societal challenges, both historical and contemporary.

2) By evaluating successful Indo-German collaborations in the past through different case studies, the working group seeks to identify important topics for future research in Indo-German collaboration. These topics encompass interdisciplinary research within the humanities and social sciences, extending to areas such as artificial intelligence, media, gender, health, migration, and sustainability.