Events

     RECYCLED FUTURES: E-Waste in South Asia

Wednesday, 22 October | 3pm UK | 7pm Pakistan | 7.30pm India

ONLINE | Registration (Free) details below

SPEAKERS: Dr Waqas Butt is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Scarbourough, and author of Life Beyond Waste: Work and Infrastructure in Urban Pakistan (2023); Dr Julia Corwin (@JulesCorwin) is Assistant Professor of Environmental Geography at LSE, and author of Analog Labor in a Digital World: E-Waste in India and the Politics of Repair (forthcoming); Dr Somjita Laha is Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute for Human Development, New Delhi, and author of 'Governing the Network: trust in E-Waste Informality in India' (2022) with research interests include political economy of waste, informal labour, global value chains, environmental governance and gender in development; Josh Lepawsky is Professor of Geography at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, and author of Reassembling Rubbish: Worlding Electronic Waste (2018).   

CHAIR: Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

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Registration is free but required. Please e-mail southasiacentre@lse.ac.uk to register; the livestream link will be sent to all registered attendees on the day of the event. 

Image © Hugo Clément, 2023, Unsplash. 

FACT & FICTION

DIASPORAS OF DALITALITY: Fighting the World

Wednesday, 29 October | 6pm | LSE Main Building

ON-SITE | No Livestream

SPEAKERS: Ritu Kochar is Doctorand in Social Policy at LSE, and is working on aspirations and experiences of international education among Dalit youth; Sat Pal Muman is Secretary, Ambedkar International Mission in London, and Co-Founder and Chairman of Caste Watch UK; Dr Suraj Milind Yengde is W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow at Harvard University, and author of Caste: A Global Story (2025).  

CHAIR: Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre. 

This event is part of our 'Fact & Fiction' series.

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Registration is free but required. Please e-mail southasiacentre@lse.ac.uk to register; details of the venue will be sent to all registered attendees on the day of the event.

GEOPOLITICS BEYOND BORDERS #9

BANGLADESH & PAKISTAN: Changing Geopolitics

Monday, 10 November | 3pm UK | 8pm Pakistan 9pm Bangladesh

ONLINE | Registration (Free) details below

SPEAKERS: Lisa Curtis (@LisaCurtisDC) is Senior Fellow & Director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington DC, and Board Chair of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; Dr Ayesha Siddiqa (@iamthedrifter) is Senior Fellow in War Studies at King's College London, and author of Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy (2007); Zafar Sobhan (@ZafarSobhan) is a lawyer & journalist, Founding Editor of the weekly Counterpoint, and a political analyst & commentator on Bangladesh.

DISCUSSANT: Alexander Evans (@aiaevans) is Professor in Practice & Associate Dean for Strategic Development at LSE School of Public Policy, and former British Acting High Commissioner to Pakistan.  

CHAIR: Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

This event is part of our 'Geopolitics beyond Borders' series.

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Registration is free but required. Please e-mail southasiacentre@lse.ac.uk to register; the livestream link will be sent to all registered attendees on the day of the event.

Image © Maria Stewart, 2020, Unsplash.

         DIVIDED EDUCATION: Technology & Inequality in South Asia

Wednesday, 19 November | 3pm UK | 8pm Pakistan | 8.45pm Nepal | 9pm Bangladesh

ONLINE | Registration (Free) details below 

SPEAKERS: Dr Amjad Islam Amjad is an independent researcher specialising in digital equity/accessibility in higher education in Pakistan, and co-author of 'Digital Equity and Accessibility in Higher Education: Reaching the Unreached' (2024); Som Nath Ghimire, an independent researcher, has an MPhil from Nepal Open University, is a schoolteacher with research interests in technology & higher education, and author most recently of 'Implications of ChatGPT for Higher Education Institutions: Exploring Nepali University Students' Perspectives' (2024); M Morshedul Islam is Professor of Communication & Journalism at the University of Chittagong, was recently Charles Wallace Visiting Fellow at LSE South Asia Centre, and author of 'A Nuanced Understanding of ICT Access Divide among the Graduate Students in Bangladesh' (2022); Dr Godfrey Chitsauko Muyambi is Post-doctoral Research Fellow at UNISA, and specialises in educational sustainability, inequality, inclusion, and technology integration, informed by extensive multicultural experience.

CHAIR: Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

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Registration is free but required. Please e-mail southasiacentre@lse.ac.uk to register; the livestream link will be sent to all registered attendees on the day of the event.

Image © Bram Naus, 2017, Unsplash.

       INTERNET PIETY: Blasphemy in Pakistan Today

Wednesday, 26 October | 3pm UK | 8pm Pakistan

ONLINE | Registration (Free) details below

SPEAKERS: Farieha Aziz (@FariehaAziz) is Co-Founder & Director of Bolo Bhi, a digital rights & civil liberties group in Karachi; Hadi Ali Chattha is an Advocate & human rights lawyer, and has represented several citizens of Pakistan accused of blasphemy; Dr Afiya Shehrbano Zia (@afiyaszia) is an independent researcher, and author of Faith and Feminism in Pakistan: Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy? (2017).

DISCUSSANT: Hassan A Niazi (@Hasan_A_Niazi) is Advocate in the High Court of Lahore, focusing on internet & technology law amongst others.

CHAIR: Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

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Registration is free but required. Please e-mail southasiacentre@lse.ac.uk to register; the livestream link will be sent to all registered attendees on the day of the event.

Image © Eirik Solheim, 2019, Unsplash.

FACT & FICTION

TONGUES SET FREE: Migration & Language in South Asia

Monday, 1 December | 3pm UK

 ONLINE | Registration (Free) details below

SPEAKERS: Ganesh N Devy is Chief Editor of The People's Linguistic Survey of India, a unique multi-volume, multi-lingual survey of 780 living languages of India, and founder of Bhasha Research Centre in Baroda, India; Christi Merrill is Professor of South Asian Literature & Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, and author of Genres of Real Life: Mediating Stories of Injustice across Languages (forthcoming); Dr Peggy Mohan is Visiting Professor at Ashoka University, Sonepat, and author of Father Tongue, Motherland: The Birth of Languages in South Asia (2025); Dr Nicholas Ostler is an independent researcher, Chairman of The Foundation for Endangered Languages (UK), and author most recently of Passwords to Paradise: How Languages Have Re-Invented World Religions (2016).

DISCUSSANT: Tej K Bhatia is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics & Director of South Asian Languages at Syracuse University, and Editor-in-Chief of Brill Research Perspectives in Multilingualism and Second Language Acquisition.  

CHAIR: Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

This event is part of our 'Fact & Fiction' series.

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Registration is free but required. Please e-mail southasiacentre@lse.ac.uk to register; the livestream link will be sent to all registered attendees on the day of the event.

TOUGH TALK #7

HOW FREE IS SPEECH IN UNIVERSITIES TODAY?

Friday, 5 December | 3.30pm UK 

ONLINE | Registration (Free) details below

SPEAKERS: Adam Habib (@AdHabb) is Professor & Vice-Chancellor of SOAS University of London; Niraja Gopal Jayal is Professor & Avantha Chair, King's India Institute, King's College London, and author of 'The Question of Academic Freedom' (2023); Larry Kramer is Professor, President & Vice-Chancellor of LSE.

DISCUSSANT: Tarun Khaitan (@tarunkhaitan) is Professor (Chair) of Public Law at LSE, co-editor of The Entrenchment of Democracy: The Comparative Constitutional Design of Elections, Parties and Voting (2024), and co-author of Hum Bharat ke Log: Bhartiya Samvidhan Pe Nau Nibandh (2025). 

CO-CHAIRS: Naufel Vilcassim is Professor of Management & Director, LSE South Asia Centre; Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

This event is part of our 'Tough Talk' series.

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Registration is free but required. Please e-mail southasiacentre@lse.ac.uk to register; the livestream link will be sent to all registered attendees on the day of the event.

Image © 'Fists in the Air', PikPng. 

FACT & FICTION

LIQUID GROWTH & ARID ECONOMICS

Wednesday, 10 December | 3pm UK 

ONLINE | Registration (Free) details below 

SPEAKERS: Dr Leela Fernandes is a political scientist and author of Governing Water in India: Inequality, Water, and the State (2022); David Gilmartin is Professor of History at North Carolina State University, and author of Blood and Water: The Indus River Basin in Modern History (2015); Corey Ross is Professor & Director of the Institute of European Global Studies, University of Basel, and author of Liquid Empire: Water and Power in the Colonial World (2024); Tirthankar Roy is Professor of Economic History at LSE, and author of Water and Development: The Troubled Economic History of the Arid Tropics (2025). 

DISCUSSANT: David Lewis is Professor of Anthropology & Development at LSE, and author of How Policy Forgets: Time and Memory in International Development (forthcoming) which analyses the history of flood control in Bangladesh.

CHAIR: Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

This event is part of our 'Fact & Fiction' series.

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Registration is free but required. Please e-mail southasiacentre@lse.ac.uk to register; the livestream link will be sent to all registered attendees on the day of the event.