The Department of Ethnologie warmly welcomes Dr. Ahsan Kamal, who will be with the South Asia Institute until October 2023. Dr. Ahsan Kamal is a Lecturer of Pakistan Studies at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, where he teaches courses in social theory, research methods, water politics, and socio-natural conflicts.  He collaborates with collectives and community-activist alliances, focusing on climate justice, land and water commons, and socio-ecological impacts of large infrastructure projects.  Dr. Kamal is currently authoring a book, Saving Sindhu: The Death and Defense of the Indus River, which explores the spread and hold of the ideas of river death and defense among riverine and agrarian communities. The book drwas from his doctoral research in Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, for which he received the 2020 Pirzada Prize from the University of California Berkeley, recognizing it as the best dissertation on Pakistan in Social Sciences, Humanities, Law and Education in North America and Europe.

Dr. Kamal has upcoming publications addressing the recent "decolonization turn" in academia, where he argues for the need for southern theorising. His most recent publication is titled "Climate, floods, and migration in Pakistan", published in the Journal of International Migration, 61(4), 349–352.

The History Department of the South Asia Institute cordially invites everyone to the roundtable "Disasters in the Making of Modern South Asia: Histories of Relief and Reconstruction", to take place on Friday, October 27th in the CATS Lecture Hall (Voßstrasse 2, 69115) between 16.15 and 17.45. With the participation of Dr. Eleonor Marcussen, Dr. Maria Framke and Dr. Joanna Simonow with moderation by Dr. Prabhat Kumar.

You can find more information about the event (including the Zoom link for online registration) here.

Guest researcher, Ahsan Kamal (Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad) in collaboration with Philipp Zehmisch (Department of Anthropology) invite for a roundtable on Friday, 20 October from 10 a.m.-12.30 p.m. in Room: 400.00.02, Karl-Jaspers-Center, ground floor (EG) on the theme of “Southern Theorising for South Asia”.

The roundtable is calling for a fresh round of introspection on the role of theory and theorising from different locations. While calls for decentring Eurocentric theory and Orientalist lenses have long been influential, current decolonial approaches move beyond merely criticizing imperial or colonial foundations of hegemonic knowledge production. They not only call for conducting ethical research but for an epistemic shift in the very practice of theorising. Here, the idea of “Southern Theorising” is an emergent conversation that centers on the potential for developing theory from alternative, subaltern and indigenous epistemological vantage points, calling for a radical shift of focus and attention towards knowledge from the many Souths.

The roundtable is open for both students and faculty.

Roundtable participants are: Kama Maclean, William Sax, Hans Harder, Antony Pattathu, Sona Prabhakaran, Kush Depala, and Ashwani Sharma