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X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Ashoka University
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TZID:Asia/Kolkata
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TZOFFSETFROM:+0530
TZOFFSETTO:+0530
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DTSTART:20250101T000000
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T133000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T143000
DTSTAMP:20261027T065021Z
CREATED:20261027T065021Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261027T065021Z
UID:103187-1793280600-1793284200@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:The Economics of AI and an Economy with AI — Transitioning to Low-Labour Production
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/the-economics-of-ai-and-an-economy-with-ai-transitioning-to-lowlabour-production/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T133000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T144500
DTSTAMP:20261025T220740Z
CREATED:20261025T220740Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261025T220740Z
UID:103112-1793280600-1793285100@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:Phyics Colloquium
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: MAX IV Laboratory in Lund\, Sweden\, hosts the world’s first fourth-generation synchrotron storage ring\, based on a pioneering multi-bend achromat design. Since its inauguration in 2016\, the facility has developed a broad experimental programme spanning fundamental and applied research. Following a brief introduction to MAX IV\, this presentation will highlight selected scientific achievements relevant to functional materials\, energy technologies and condensed-matter physics. \nExamples will illustrate how complementary X-ray methods reveal electronic states\, chemical heterogeneity and nanoscale structure\, and how these properties evolve during material function. Particular attention will be given to coherent imaging of functional materials and time-resolved spectroscopy of catalytic processes. Together\, these approaches help connect microscopic mechanisms with macroscopic performance and demonstrate the growing possibilities for studying materials in situ and operando. \nThe presentation will conclude with an outlook on MAX 4U\, the planned upgrade of the 3 GeV storage ring targeting an emittance below 75 pm·rad. Together with developments in beamlines\, optics\, detectors and sample environments\, the increased brightness and coherence will extend opportunities to investigate smaller structures\, follow faster processes and study increasingly complex materials under realistic conditions. \nAbout the Speaker: Prof. Olof Karis is the Director of the MAX IV Laboratory in Lund\, Sweden\, a role he has held since July 2023\, following his service as Interim Director from March 2022 to June 2023. Prior to joining MAX IV\, he was Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University from 2015 to 2022\, where he was appointed Professor of Physics in 2011. His research focuses on electronic structure and ultrafast phenomena in magnetic materials. His group has developed instrumentation to study magnetisation dynamics using extreme ultraviolet (XUV) radiation generated through high harmonic generation. \nWe look forward to your active participation.
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/phyics-colloquium/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T133000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T145500
DTSTAMP:20261028T032225Z
CREATED:20261022T002330Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261028T032225Z
UID:102272-1793280600-1793285700@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:Political Science Colloquium
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: Most writing on the Indian National Congress asks why it declined and what it would take for the party to revive itself. This talk\, drawn from a book in progress\, asks two different questions. First\, why has a party in decline for decades not disappeared? Second\, why has it been unable to recover power in many of the states it has lost\, from Tamil Nadu in the 1960s to Assam in the 2020s? \nI argue that parties live by the stories they tell about themselves\, and when political realities change but these stories endure\, narratives harden into myths that inhibit adaptation. Three such myths once powered Congress’s dominance and now help explain both its persistence and its decline. The ideological myth casts Congress as the custodian of the idea of India; the governance myth presents it as the natural party of government and the champion of the poor; and the organisational myth imagines a party with a nationwide presence\, held together by the Nehru-Gandhi family. \n\nDrawing on historical comparisons with other founding parties\, multi-site fieldwork\, and analysis of electoral returns and survey data\, among other data sources\, this book indicates that the Congress story reveals a broader paradox of party decline. It shows that the narratives that sustain a party’s identity and survival can also prevent it from adapting to political change. The Congress may remain a large enough party to occupy the opposition space\, yet too myth-bound to fill it. \nBio: Rahul Verma is an associate professor of political science at the Law School\, Shiv Nadar University\, Chennai. He is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR)\, New Delhi. Previously\, he taught at the Department of Political Science\, Ashoka University\, Sonipat. \nHe has a PhD in Political Science from the University of California\, Berkeley. His research interests include political representation\, political parties\, public opinion polling and voting behaviour. He is a regular columnist for various news platforms\, and has published papers in several peer-reviewed academic journals.  \nHis book co-authored with Pradeep Chhibber\, Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India (OUP: New York\, 2018)\, develops a new approach to defining the contours of what constitutes an ideology in multi-ethnic countries such as India. He recently co-edited a volume with Sudha Pai & Shyam Babu – Dalits in the New Millennium (CUP: New Delhi\, 2023).
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/political-science-colloquium/
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T133000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T150000
DTSTAMP:20261015T025140Z
CREATED:20261015T025140Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261015T025140Z
UID:101835-1793280600-1793286000@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:Philosophy Colloquium - Justin Tiwald - How Virtues of Care Are More Fundamental Than Other Virtues
DESCRIPTION:A Colloquium of the Philosophy Department\, part of the Harish and Bina Shah School of Humanities \n13:30-15:00\, Thursday 29 October 2026\, AC02-LR103 \nSpeaker: Justin Tiwald (University of Hong Kong) \nSpeaker Bio: Justin Tiwald has published widely on Chinese thought. His particular areas of study include Confucian\, Daoist\, and Neo-Confucian accounts of moral psychology\, well-being\, and political authority\, as well as the significance of Confucian views for virtue ethics\, individual rights\, and moral epistemology. He is also series co-editor of Oxford Chinese Thought\, a translation series with Oxford University Press. \nTitle: How Virtues of Care Are More Fundamental Than Other Virtues \nAbstract: In this talk\, I hope to disentangle some claims that people often make about the unity of virtues or unity of ethical values. In moral philosophy and in everyday moral conversation\, people often say that the best instantiation of one virtue requires that one also instantiate other virtues. For example\, giving to someone in great need seems like a good candidate for being a virtue (the virtue of charity\, perhaps)\, but it is less-than-fully virtuous if I give to someone disrespectfully or in ways that seem completely heedless of considerations of justice. Imagine that I give food to someone who really needs it\, but do so in a way that is contemptuous or underscores how pitiful I find them (which lacks respect)\, or give one person ten million US dollars and ignore other people in need (which lacks justice). Similarly\, virtues of respect seem less than ideal if they are just perfunctory or motivated by a desire to manipulate others\, which suggests that virtues of respect also require care. \nAlthough these sorts of dependencies between virtues often crisscross or run in both directions\, it is often said that certain sorts of virtuous caring (e.g.\, love\, empathy) is more central or more fundamental than other virtues. So\, although virtues of respect require caring and virtues of caring require respect\, somehow care is more important or central. How can this be\, and in what sense (or senses) is it plausible? These questions were once discussed at great length in Confucian philosophy\, especially by Confucians in the 10th through 12th centuries CE. In this talk\, I will look closely at this long-neglected body of literature in Confucian virtue theory\, unpack some of the suggestive metaphors and examples that they developed\, and point to the key respects in which they take virtuous caring to be central. \n 
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/philosophy-colloquium-justin-tiwald-how-virtues-of-care-are-more-fundamental-than-other-virtues/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T134500
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T143000
DTSTAMP:20261029T023206Z
CREATED:20261029T023206Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261029T023206Z
UID:103411-1793281500-1793284200@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:Study Abroad Student Experience Series by Sanaa Mittal
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/study-abroad-student-experience-series-by-sanaa-mittal/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T183000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20261029T194500
DTSTAMP:20261028T030627Z
CREATED:20261028T030627Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261028T030627Z
UID:103283-1793298600-1793303100@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:The Cow Conundrum: Navigating ‘The Bovine Multiple’ in Delhi’s Urban Villages
DESCRIPTION:Dear All\, \nWe are delighted to invite you to the third talk of the Environmental Studies Colloquium Series Monsoon 2026. \nDate & Time: 29 October\, 6:30 p.m. (Online) \nTopic: The Cow Conundrum: Navigating ‘The Bovine Multiple’ in Delhi’s Urban Villages \nZoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/96141884561?pwd=BgkZweRwejScW2ecm6nP5gcdlFzvYb.1 \nAbstract: India has over 5 million straying cattle\, of which 80\,000 free-roam the capital city of Delhi. Belonging to small-scale dairies dotting Delhi’s urban villages\, bovines are critical to the informal supply of milk in the city. While colonial and postcolonial planning regimes have attempted to remove ‘agrarian’ ecologies and entities from the urban limits of Delhi\, bovines despite being designated an ‘illegal’ entity\, continue to forge lives in the city. This is possible because the bovine inhabits and contains varied identities\, imaginaries\, and contradictions\, for instance\, as sacred mother\, an unsanitary nuisance\, and domestic animal—what I term ‘the cow conundrum.’ \nHistorically traced to the 19th century in the symbolic emergence of the cow as a sacred\, pious\, and political animal\, the cow conundrum in contemporary India is evidenced by how the state aggressively propagates cow protectionism\, whilst simultaneously promoting capitalist expansion of dairy systems and carabeef exports. In the everyday\, these contradictions are further heightened when interrogated within the ambiguous spatial formation of the ‘urban village’ in Delhi—where the urban and rural co-exist and collide\, including bovine entities. \nIn perpetually treading multiple identities along the contours of legal-illegal\, sacred-profane\, formal-informal\, human-nonhuman\, and urban-agrarian\, bovines weave together a distinct iteration of the urban through material-semiotic entanglements in the city. Rather than seeking an essentialist definition of the bovine figure\, the study instead postulates how bovine realities are produced\, negotiated\, and sustained in the everyday—towards understanding the material and ontological politics of city-making and urbanicity. Drawing on STS perspectives\, the research argues that the bovine is not a singular\, stable being or object\, but a multiple. In doing so\, the attempt is to conceptually trace the contradictions that constitute ‘the cow conundrum’ through the bovine multiple. \nSpeaker: Shruti Ragavan is an independent researcher currently based in Delhi. As part of the ERC funded Urban Ecologies grant at the National Institute of Advanced Studies\, her doctoral research\, awarded in 2026\, examines the naturecultures of bovines in Delhi and Guwahati through the notion of the cultivated. Situated at the intersection of southern urbanisms and more-than-human geography\, the thesis interrogates the urban question by foregrounding bovine lifeworlds in the city across registers of the archival\, ethnographic\, sensorial\, and comparative. Engaged in research along the nature-society interface in India over the past decade\, Shruti’s interests broadly fall within the ambit of human-animal relations\, agrarian-urbanisms\, and sensory entanglements. \nWe look forward to having you join us for an engaging talk and discussion. \n  \nwarm regards\, \nEnvrionmental Studies Department \n  \n 
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/the-cow-conundrum-navigating-the-bovine-multiple-in-delhis-urban-villages/
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