Dear Friend of the OICSD,
Welcome to the latest issue of the OICSD newsletter featuring quarterly updates on our research, scholarships and seminars.
We wrapped up another successful academic year after celebrating our tenth anniversary in 2023. As we turn to the next decade, we welcomed our largest cohort of ten new scholars to the Centre. We also had the largest number of successful doctoral graduates this year. The OICSD hosted a wide range of events, from internal collaborations within the University of Oxford to forging new partnerships. Here we recap our successes from 2024’s Trinity Term with the Centre’s latest updates on research, events and plans.
Publications
Snigdha Lal (DPhil candidate in Physics) led a paper providing crucial insights for developing a material-by-design approach in the quest for highly efficient silver-bismuth-based perovskite-inspired materials, which are being explored as non-toxic materials in photovoltaic applications. The research shows how different combinations of silver and bismuth in thin film materials affect the energy generated for solar panels. “The Role of Chemical Composition in Determining the Charge-Carrier Dynamics in (AgI)x(BiI3)y Rudorffites” is published in Advanced Functional Materials; Open Access version available here.
Shobhana Nagraj (OICSD Research Associate) published her research on global health, ethics, and evidence-based interventions for healthcare systems. In one publication, Nagraj and co-authors review the ethical impacts of international medical electives on local students and patient care, highlighting concerns about potential benefits and harms to both groups. A second paper evaluates the role of medical support workers in the UK’s NHS during COVID-19, providing insights into their contributions and challenges faced in a high-pressure environment. In a landscape analysis co-authored by Nagraj, the research identifies and evaluates global stakeholders’ interventions for reducing preterm birth rates, aiming to improve neonatal outcomes worldwide.
Gauri Chandra (DPhil candidate in Public Policy) co-authored a study examining the relationship between ethical consumerism, where consumers’ preferences stretch beyond immediate self-interest to prosocial objectives, and traditional civic engagement such as philanthropy and activism. The research finds evidence of a consistent civic identity that stretches across traditional civic engagement activities and ethical consumerism: the greater an individual’s civic engagement, the more likely they are to engage in ethical consumerism. The paper is published in VOLUNTAS – the International Journal of Voluntary and Non-profit Organisations. You can access the paper here.
OICSD Events
Education and Inequity: Perspectives from South Asia
(in collaboration with Education South Asia)
We hosted the one-day symposium in May with researchers and practitioners working on education in India. The presentations spanned four panels: Pedagogic Peripheries, Intersectional Inequalities, Policy & Practice and Dominant Discourses chaired by Arun Kumar (University of Nottingham), Ritu Kochar (LSE), Alison Bukhari (Educate Girls) and Ritika Arora (LSE) respectively. The objective of the symposium is to build a network of researchers working on education in South Asia and explore how the research fits into OICSD’s vision to conduct policy-oriented research on sustainable development challenges in India.
OICSD Research Showcase – Trinity Term 2024
Our termly Research Showcase featured presentations from OICSD scholars and fellow Somervillian students. Aanchal Saxena (Elizabeth Moir Scholar 2023) presented her ongoing project on documenting stories of female entrepreneurs in the field of conservation and climate action. Gaurav Dubey (Indira Gandhi Scholar 2019) presented the Climate Action Research Portal – a curated repository of ongoing research. Other presentations included those from Project EduAccess on making higher education more accessible; on extreme heat and the inequities in cooling energy demand; and on women’s agency in the Kashmir valley.
The ZERO Institute – Energy group reception
The OICSD jointly hosted an event to bring together energy researchers, policy and business professionals with the ZERO Institute. The initiative gathered researchers from across the University and beyond to tackle questions surrounding zero-carbon energy systems, and to accelerate multi-disciplinary research on the zero-carbon transition.
Violence and the City: Perspectives from Syria and India
Dr Ammar Azzouz (British Academy Research Fellow, Somerville College) and Fahad Zuberi (OICSD Scholar) discussed the concept of Domicide in the context of Syria and India. Both presenters discussed the relationship between architecture and violence, both during times of active conflict and during peace.
Celebrating 50 years of Shabana Azmi in Film
Collaboration with the 26th edition of the UK Asian Film Festival to celebrate the career of veteran actress Shabana Azmi in Indian cinema. Shabana was in conversation with Dr J. Daniel Luther, Trustee at UKAFF and Associate Programme Director, Rhodes House. Her work is known for its commitment to fighting injustices, particularly around women and children.
Announcements
Congratulations to our newest doctor – Dr. Aavika Dhanda!
Aavika joined the OICSD as the Mary De Zouche scholar reading for a DPhil in Biology in 2019. She studied the effects of anthropogenic changes on birds of eastern Indian Himalaya at varying scales.
At a macro scale, she evaluated how the distributions of Flycatchers in Northeast India and Bhutan are affected by climate change under different emission scenarios. She predicted that the bird communities are influenced by both temperatures and rainfall patterns, which can become aggravated in the future.
At a micro scale, Aavika investigated how the bird communities of Dibang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh are impacted by local land-use land-cover changes. She found that while primary forests have evolutionarily unique species (phylogenetic diversity), the slash-and-burn agricultural lands support birds with unique body characteristics (functional diversity). She also found that although the overall bird communities show resilience, those foraging in middle canopies can benefit from forest disturbances. Her thesis further highlights the role of indigenous people’s lands in maintaining climatic buffering and associated niches of birds, with implications for regional biodiversity conservation.
Shreya Sharma (DPhil scholar in Chemistry) is selected as one of the inaugural fellows for the Local Policy Lab, the new alliance between the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University and Oxfordshire County Council. The Local Policy Fellows will work in partnership with Oxfordshire County Council and its policy partners to design and conduct impact evaluations, evaluate datasets, and collect qualitative data on health and climate policy initiatives. Read more about the fellowship here.
OpenAg 2024
The fourth edition of OpenAg symposium will be held on 18th September, Wednesday at Said Business School. The flagship conference will focus on various forms of security and how it relates to food systems and climate change. OpenAg 2024 will platform contemporary conversations on pressing issues of energy security, water policy and how that interact with the broader issue of changing food systems due to climate change. We will announce the panellists and further details in July. Block your calendars and sign up to get an invite.
Scholar-in-focus
Dr Safa Fanian completed her DPhil in Geography and Environment as an Indira Gandhi Scholar. She joined the OICSD in 2019 to study the co-evolution of water risks and governance processes in Guwahati, India. Safa is now a Research Fellow at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific.
Safa’s ongoing work is on the intricacies of water economics, exploring participatory research methods such as dialogues for equitable decision-making, and the imperative issue of water justice. As a member of the Water Justice Hub, she actively contributes to advancing linked education and research objectives. Simultaneously, she is engaged in a project with the Development Policy Centre, which builds bottom-up insights to understand and improve water governance in Papua New Guinea. Safa has also been a National Geographic Explorer. During her DPhil, she worked with a hedge fund to measure water risks of publicly listed companies. Read about her work here
