Dear Friend of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development,
Welcome to the September 2023 issue of the OICSD newsletter, featuring updates on our research, scholarships and seminars.
Over this summer, we continued celebrating the eventful first decade of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Oxford. The Centre was launched through a historic agreement between the Government of India and the University of Oxford, with a primary objective to support research and talented applicants from India to continue their education at Oxford. Over the past ten years, the centre has grown from its first batch of three scholars to an alumni base of over 50 scholars! We are delighted that we are now the largest scholarship-granting body exclusively for Indian students at the University of Oxford.
Our commitment to foster “brain-gain” for India continues to inspire our work for the future. Alongside celebrating the past decade, we are making a roadmap for the next ten years. This would not have been possible without the continued generosity from the Indian government, individual philanthropists and organisations in India, the UK, and rest of the world. As our alumni base grows, our goal is to lead the conversation on sustainable development by building an interdisciplinary network of researchers who are committed to the Centre’s objectives.
This year is also historic for the Centre – as we welcome our biggest cohort of scholars at Oxford. With the launch of three new scholarships, we are proudly continuing Somerville’s legacy of including the excluded. We launched the Savitribai Phule Scholarship to support Indian students from marginalised communities and underrepresented backgrounds. We spoke to the first Phule scholar, Niharika Singh, for the Somerville Magazine, read her interview here.
Please read on for more about the Centre’s latest research, scholarships and seminars.
OICSD Scholars Ishani Mookherjee, Meghmala Mukherjee and Payal Agrawal with Mr Gopal Subramanian at the tenth anniversary celebration held at the Royal Automobile Club in July.
OICSD Research
The Future of Cooling – Dr Radhika Khosla leads crucial research! OICSD Research Director Radhika Khosla’s recent co-authored study published in Nature Sustainability in July 2023 indicates that a 1.5 to 2°C rise in mean global temperature will drive up the number of uncomfortably hot days in the UK by 30% – and we don’t yet have the sustainable cooling technologies to cope. BBC Newsnight covered the study and a number of other outlets featured Dr Khosla. For further details, read the long-form version of the work here.
Dr Trisha Gopalakrishna’s DPhil research has been published recently in the paper for the Conservation Letters – A Journal of the Society for Conservation. It analyses the co-relation between forest restoration strategies and local land use with a case study of India. It also provides policy recommendations on devising effective strategies for forest restoration. Trisha’s other study is published in Biotropica that provides five visions and contributions that the young tropical restoration science community can make for an impactful UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Dr Safa Fanaian’s paper is published in Environmental Research Communications and examines the co-evolution of three water risks and governance responses through the case of Guwahati, India. Guwahati, on the Brahmaputra River in the Northeast of India, serves as a case of an intermediate city to demonstrate changes in water risk governance trends. Safa completed her DPhil in Geography and Environment in 2022. This paper was a part of her research during her time at OICSD. It is an open access publication that canbe accessed here.
Aavika Dhanda’s observations are published in the Indian Birds: Journal of SouthAsian Ornithology. She intensively sampled birds in the unexplored tropical rainforests of Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya, India which is a part of the Indomalayan hotspot. The report records of threatened birds – three species of hornbills and one of nuthatch. Aavika joined OICSD as a Mary De Zouche scholar in 2019, reading for a DPhil in Zoology. The reportcan be accessed here.
Awards for OICSD
Aradhana CV is awarded the Best Doctoral Student Prize by the Society of Legal Scholars for her research, “Rape Adjudication in India: a Reflection of Female Autonomy or a Reinforcement of Stereotypes?”
Dr Radhika Khosla received an honourable mention in this year’s Bina Agarwal Prize for Young Scholars in Ecological Economics. Details are here.
OICSD Events
Savitribai Phule Scholarship launch
As a part of our 10th anniversary celebration, we launched the Savitribai Phule Graduate Scholarship in May 2023 at Somerville College. The keynote address was delivered by Lord Harries of Pentregarth, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Dalits, on the efforts to end caste discrimination in the United Kingdom. This was followed by a panel discussion with Barbara Harriss-White (Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford), Surajkumar Thube (representative of Project EduAccess), Raju Kendre (co- founder and CEO of Eklavya India Foundation) and Niharika Singh (the first Savitribai Phule scholar). More details on the event here.
Research Showcase on India and Sustainable Development
Our latest research showcase held in June had OICSD Scholars and Research Associates present their research projects. Prof. Judith Heyer started the event with a keynote lecture on “The impact of industrialisation and economic development in the hinterland of Coimbatore and Tiruppur”. It was followed by a discussion and presentations by Dr Anant Jani (OICSD Research Associate), Smit Singh (former OICSD scholar), Sanghamitra Mukherjee and Aavika Dhanda (current OICSD scholars). The details of the presentations are here.
Celebration at the Royal Automobile Club, London
Our tenth-anniversary celebrations continued with a drink’s reception at the Royal Automobile Club, London. We were joined by the OICSD Advisory Board members, the Deputy High Commissioner from the Indian High Commission Mr Sujit Ghosh, Mr Gopal Subramanian, Mr Sarosh Zaiwalla and our community of supporters in the UK. Rt. Hon. Patricia Hewitt, the Chair of the Advisory Board delivered the opening remarks followed by Mr Ghosh, Mr Subramanian and Mr Zaiwalla. OICSD Research Scholars Aradhana SV and Snigdha Lal spoke about their experience at the centre and the community that has been cultivated at Somerville College.
From L to R: Sara Kalim, Dr Trisha Gopalakrishna, Vinita Govindrajan, Dr Radhika Khosla
Congratulations to our newest doctor – Dr Trisha Gopalakrishna!
Trisha joined OICSD as an Indira Gandhi Scholar in 2019 for a DPhil in Geography and Environment. Her research studies the potential for forest restoration as a climate change mitigation strategy. Trisha has started as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Geography at the University of Exeter researching restoration of the savanna boime in Brazil and India.
Upcoming Event
Presenting the OpenAg Symposium 2023 – 6th October
We are delighted to organise the third annual OpenAg symposium in collaboration with our partner, UPL on October 6 2023, Friday. It will take place at Said Business School, University of Oxford following by a dinner at Somerville College. The theme for this year is Enhancing Resilience: Interventions to Deliver Lasting Change in Agriculture with the keynote address delivered by Helen Browning OBE.
The full list of speakers and the schedule are available on our website.
Other updates
Change of personnel at OICSD
Neeraj Shetye took over as the new Partnerships and Communications Manager at OICSD in June from Vinita Govindarajan. Neeraj holds an MSc in Politics of Conflict Rights and Justice from SOAS University of London. He worked as the Research Support Officer at the Oxford Internet Institute before joining OICSD. His research interests are in Indian social policy with a focus on access to higher education.
OICSD in India – December 2023
We will be joining the Somerville College Choir for a tour in India! The team will visit Delhi, Goa and Mumbai between 07th and 16th December 2023. The tour will begin in Delhi (7th to 10th) followed by Goa (10th to 12th) and concluding in Mumbai (13th to 16th).
For details, follow our social media or write to us on oicsd@some.ox.ac.uk or sara.kalim@some.ox.ac.uk
Support the OICSD
The OICSD is supported by a network of philanthropists in India and the UK, who have enabled us to double the number of
postgraduate scholarships we offer to talented Indian students. If you would like to support our mission of education and research that benefits India and the world, the Oxford India Foundation gives donors based in India a new and tax-efficient way to support the activities of the OICSD. For more information about making a gift to support the Centre, please contact our Director of Development Sara Kalim at: sara.kalim@some.ox.ac.uk
For regular updates on our research and events, we invite you to follow us on Twitter: @OxIndiaCentre
Our mailing address is:
OICSD, Somerville College, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HD
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