Gender, Education and Inequality: Pandemic and the Present Times

A workshop co-organised by Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi,  University of Glasgow, School of Education and Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta on 13 November 2021 at 14:30-18:15 IST.

It is funded by ESRC/GCRF project Can Dual Apprenticeships Create Better and More Equitable Social and Economic Outcomes for Young People? A Comparative Study of India and Mexico (2018-21) (A collaboration of University of Glasgow, School of Education, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Monterrey Institute of Technology, Mexico, University of Cologne, Germany, University of Zurich, Switzerland).

The speakers are:
Saikat Maitra & Sadaf Sethwala, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta
Nandini Manjrekar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
Manish Jain, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi
Rebecca lpe, University of Glasgow
Yamini Agarwal, Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi
Geetha B.Nambissan, Professor (Retd.), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Srabani Maitra, University of Glasgow

The event will be a hybrid event involving both online (via zoom) and in-person participation.

New Directions in Gender, Education and Poverty

A Roundtable Discussion
24 June 2021, 11.30 – 12.30 (UK time)/ 16:00-17:00 (IST) 

Organised by Dr Srabani Maitra, Dr Sebastian Schwecke, Dr Saikat Maitra 

This roundtable was organised by the School of Education at the University of Glasgow, Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office (MWS IBO), New Delhi, and the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) to engage with research on gender, education and poverty by both senior and early career academics. 

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and adoption of the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs), seek to incorporate and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental (UNESCO, 2017). Concomitant with this, is the emphasis on the critical role of equitable access to education (SDG4) for sustainable development and transformative change.  

Over the past decade, major progress has been made towards increasing access to education and school enrolment rates at all levels, particularly for girls. Nevertheless, some 750 million adults – two thirds of them women – remained illiterate in 2016 (United Nations, 2021) and about 260 million children were still out of school in 2018 — nearly one fifth of the global population in that age group (UNESCO, 2021). Poverty remains a significant constraint for women’s educational attainment. Moreover, how poverty impacts women’s education is complicated by multiple social and cultural contexts.  

This roundtable brought together researchers from the global South and the North to foreground new directions exploring the intersections of gender, education and poverty.  

Areas of focus 

  • Historical trajectories 
  • Socio, economic and cultural dimensions 
  • Policy formulations 
  • Digitalisation 
  • Inclusion and sustainable development 

Presenters:
Prof Ellen Boeren, Research Director, School of Education, University of Glasgow 
Dr Barbara Read, Reader, School of Education, University of Glasgow 
Dr Srabani Maitra, Senior Lecturer, School of Education, University of Glasgow 
Dr Saikat Maitra, Assistant Professor, Public Policy and Management Group, IIMC
Prof Parimala Rao, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Prof Nandini Manjrekar, Professor, School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Mumbai
Dr Manish Jain, Associate Professor, School of Education Studies, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, New Delhi
This was an online event.


Legacies of Feminism in Germany and India

A Roundtable Discussion
19 March 2021 (1 pm GMT/ 2 pm CET/ 6:30 pm IST)

This was an online event organised by the Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office and the International Standing Working Group on Medialization and Empowerment at the German Historical Institute London.

Postcolonial feminists and feminists of colour have long sought to complicate the history and study of feminism. Social scientists and feminist theorists like Chandra Mohanty, Kumari Jayawardena and Kimberlé Crenshaw have drawn attention to the simultaneity and intersecting nature of oppression and marginalization. They show that women’s inequality is deeply entangled with other forms of oppression and structures of power, including colonialism, capitalism, racism, homophobia and ableism. By drawing attention to the differences between women, they challenge a homogeneous definition of womanhood, instead showing how categories like race and sexuality have produced different experiences of gendered marginalization. In turn, they contest a vision of feminism based on supposedly universal emancipatory politics. In place of broad, universalizing categories that stem from the experiences of white, western women, these scholars reveal the manifold meanings of feminism and women’s emancipation across time and space, and highlight the importance of situating feminist movements and interventions within their specific historical and geographic contexts.

Building on this scholarship, this roundtable evaluated the historical legacies of feminist activism in two very different contexts: Germany and India. By bringing together the diverse trajectories of women’s rights activism in India and Germany, the roundtable sought to critically examine the meaning and history of feminism. What different kinds of periodization do we find if we move away from the Western-centred genealogy of feminist waves? How has the meaning of feminism changed across different political, social and historical contexts? How has women’s activism in the past shaped how we think about feminism and women’s rights today? And how has feminist activism intersected with other rights-based movements and issues, including decolonization, race and ethnicity, labour, LGBTQ rights, the rights of children and disability?

Featuring scholars from India, Germany and the UK, the panel asked what the historically and geographically diverse legacies of feminism mean for the shared political project of women’s rights today and how have feminists negotiated the push and pull of political change?

Speakers:
Helma Lutz
, Goethe Universität Frankfurt
Janaki Nair, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Samita Sen, University of Cambridge
Paula-Irene Villa, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

The International Standing Working Group on Medialization and Empowerment is part of the international project “Knowledge Unbound: Internationalisation, Networking, Innovation in and by the Max Weber Stiftung.” It is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. 


Conference on Archiving, Recording and Representing Feminism: The Global History of Women’s Emancipation in the 20th Century

This virtual conference was the second meeting of the International Standing Working Group (ISWG) on Medialization and Empowerment
10-12 December 2020

Convenors: Christina von Hodenberg and Jane Freeland (German Historical Institute London)
Partners: Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office, German Historical Institute Washington DC, German Historical Institute Rome, Orient Institute Beirut
Conference Programme
For details click here.


A Discussion on the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020

This was an online event organised jointly by DWIH and MWS IBO
14 October 2020

Moderator: Dr. Katja Lasch
Presentations by project partners of MWS IBO
Geetha B Nambissan (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)
Nandini Manjrekar (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)
Shivali Tukdeo (National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru)
Followed by Discussions and Question & Answers


Colloquium on Education and the Urban in India since the Nineteenth Century

This virtual colloquium was organised by the ‘Education and the Urban’ Research Group of Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office (MWS IBO)
24-25 September 2020

Convenors: Indra Sengupta (MWS IBO & German Historical Institute London), Debarati Bagchi (MWS IBO), Yamini Agarwal (MWS IBO)
Speakers: Akash Bhattacharya (Azim Premji University, Bengaluru), Nandini Manjrekar (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai), Debarati Bagchi (MWS IBO), Geetha Nambissan (Former Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), Yamini Agarwal (MWS IBO) and Shivali Tukdeo (National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru)
Programme


Winter School on Global History- Challenges and Opportunities

The winter school was organised jointly by Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office, GHIL India Research Programme, Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University and the Heidelberg Centre South Asia, New Delhi
16-21 February 2020, India International Centre New Delhi


It was directed at PhD and early career scholars mainly from German and Indian universities who are interested in the approaches of global history, regardless of the region they specialise in.

As part of the Winter School, a panel discussion on The Languages of Global History was organised on 18 February 2020.
Panel Poster


The Global Revolution of Time in the Nineteenth Century

Fourth Max Weber Lecture
Speaker: Sebastian Conrad (Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, FU Berlin)
30 January 2020, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata

Organised by the Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office in collaboration with the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Jadavpur University and Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata.

The nineteenth century witnessed a fundamental transformation of notions of time on a global scale. Around the world, time-hallowed practices of time measurement and of time-related cosmologies had to come to terms with a new global regime. This new time regime constituted a four-fold revolution, introducing the concepts of standardization, of global synchronicity, of progressive time, and of deep historical time. In this talk, Sebastian Conrad argued that this temporal revolution cannot be equated with the diffusion of European temporality, but it needs to be understood as a multifaceted response to global challenges.

The talk scheduled to be held in New Delhi on 27 January had to be cancelled, due to the speaker falling ill.
Lecture Poster


The Politics of Humiliation: Historical Trajectories

Third Max Weber Lecture
Speaker: Ute Frevert (Max Planck Institute for Human Development)
22 November 2019, Jadunath Mu­seum and Resource Centre Kolkata and
25 November 2019, Goethe Institut New Delhi

The talk was about the power of public shaming and humiliation in the mod­ern world. Such strategies were either meant to punish and reintegrate a per­son, who had violated social norms, or to debase and stigmatize those whom others wanted to exclude from groups or society at large. The talk follows the development of such practices since the late eighteenth century in legal, education and foreign policies, mainly with regard to Europe, China, and India. It focused on the concept of human digni­ty and why this has become paramount.
Lecture Poster


Panel Discussion on Education, Marginality and the Urban: Linkages and Intersections

An event of India Research Programme of German Historical Institute London
26 June 2019, German Historical Institute London

Speakers: Isabel Ramos Lobato (ILS Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development Dortmund); Nandini Manjrekar (Tata Institute of Social Science Mumbai); Geetha B. Nambissan (JNU Delhi); Shivali Tukdeo (National Institute of Advanced Studies Bengaluru); Georgie Wemyss (University of East London)
Moderator and commentator: Meg Maguire, King’s College London

 The panel discussion was planned to bring together some of the principal investigators of the research group Education and the Urban in India, with scholars from the UK and Germany who are working on related themes to share perspectives emanating from their research engagement within different so­cio-political and urban contexts. The dis­cussion focused on the intersectionalities of education, marginality and the urban space.

Concept Note 
Poster


In Global Transit: Forced Migration of Jews and other Refugees (1940s-1960s)

Conference at GHI West and The MAGNES Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley
20-22 May 2019, Berkeley USA

This conference, the second in a conference series devoted to people “In Global Transit”, built on the 2017 conference (that focused on the Jewish and political refugees from Nazi-controlled Europe who fled, at least initially, to European colonies or countries of the global South) took a broader perspective and expanded the geographic and analytical focus. It examined the experience of Jewish refugees who found haven, but not new homes, in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Conference Report
Conference Poster


Education and State Formation in Europe, East Asia and the USA

Second Max Weber Lecture
Speaker: Andy Green (Institute of Education of the University College London)   
22 February 2019, India International Centre New Delhi and
26 February 2019, TISS Naoroji Campus Mumbai

In this lecture, Andy Green discussed the social origins of mass education in the West, including the roles played by industrial and urban change, proletarianisation and liberalism, and how nation-building lay at the heart
of the creation of modern education. While human capital theories have focused on how schools and colleges supply the skills for economic growth, Green showed how the forming of citizens and national identities through education has often provided the necessary condition for both economic and social development.
Lecture Poster


Education and Urban Crises

First Max Weber Lecture
Speaker: Pauline Lipman (University of Illinois, Chicago) 
12 November 2018, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) Bengaluru
16 November 2018, India International Centre New Delhi

This paper argued that education is co-constitutive of the neoliberal economic-political order and its urban crises and is a critical site for resistance to neoliberalism, racism, reactionary nationalism, and xenophobia. She began with the stakes of the present moment: the conjuncture of profound economic, political, social, and ecological crises and global resurgence of xenophobic, white supremacist, nationalist, anti-democratic agendas, on one hand, and new resistances, solidarities, social imaginaries and emerging counter-hegemonic programs, on the other and traced this polarized moment to the protracted structural crisis of capitalism, globalized neoliberalism, and legacies of colonialism, white supremacy, xenophobia, and entrenched class/race/ gender/caste/ethnic/religious social hierarchies that variously permeate our societies at all scales.
Lecture Poster


Interrogating Marginality: Education and the Urban

The workshop, a part of the research project Education and the Urban, was organised jointly by the Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences and National Institute of Advanced Studies
12-14 November 2018, National Institute of Advanced Studies Bengaluru

The workshop sought to provide a platform for PhD/post-doctoral researchers to re-examine their work through the lens of ‘the urban’ and marginality. Lectures in the form of masterclasses by experts from the fields of urban development and education were organized to help early-career researchers understand the key concepts of the project’s theme, i.e. the urban, margins, marginality and education. These were interspersed with brief presentations of their own research by young and early-career scholars.
Programme in pdf
Workshop Poster


In Global Transit: Jewish Migrants from Hitler’s Europe in Asia, Africa and Beyond

The conference was jointly organised by Max Weber Stiftung’s German Historical Institutes in Washington and London, and its India Branch Office in Delhi and the American Institute of Indian Studies.
14-16 February 2018, Loreto College Middleton Row Kolkata

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The conference was the first in a series of conferences through which the Max Weber Foundation aims to enrich public debate by bringing a historical perspective to the issues of migration and refugee aid. It primarily showcased recent research on the experiences of European Jews who fled Europe during the Nazi era.
India, one of the temporary havens for Jews fleeing persecution in Europe, is a fitting location for a conference on these largely unexplored, transitory havens for European Jews in Asia and Africa.

The conference was accompanied by an exhibition on European Jewish refugees in Calcutta “The City as Refuge: Jewish Calcutta and refugees from Hitler’s Europe“

Programme in pdf


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