We are excited to share Dr. Joanna Simonow’s book release with you! In "Ending Famine in India: A Transnational History of Food Aid and Development, c. 1890-1950", the author provides insight into how famine was addressed in India at the beginning of the twentieth century - both to provide short-term relief and long-term solutions. As of 23.06.2023, it has been published by Leiden University Press and is available there. In addition, the book will also be published as an open access version, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF).

Scholars working on critical editions of premodern texts have at their disposal increasing quantities of material digitized as e-text. This presents the scholar with unprecedented opportunities: the scholar can now easily access and collate large numbers of witnesses available in online repositories or emerging from ongoing research projects, including those that produce e-text from manuscripts. But it is also a challenge: almost as soon as the scholar decides that their critical edition is complete and sends it to the press, new witness material is bound to emerge, potentially rendering the just finished edition, in a sense, obsolete.

In my talk, I introduce a new online software tool designed as a response to these new opportunities and challenges: the Open Philology Editing Environment, developed recently at Leiden University under the auspices of the Open Philology Project.

Dr. Rafal Felbur is Wissenschaftlicher Assistent to the Professorship of Buddhist Studies at the University of Heidelberg, Germany

You can get more information about the event here.

What counts as heritage in Pakistan and how could and should heritage conservation look like?

In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, clerics and bureaucrats define which historical or natural sites, folk and religious expressions are worthy of conserving and remembering. This implies an erasure of undesired forms of heritage from public memory and consciousness, especially if they are linked to religions other than mainstream Islam: Hinduist, Buddhist, Christian, Sikh, Ahmadiyya and Sufi sites and practices thus struggle for their survival. They are part of an active and often vibrant counterculture of living heritage that deserves attention.

In March 2023, eight students from Heidelberg along with their teacher set out to explore the critically endangered, forgotten, and revived cultural and natural heritage of Pakistan. Accompanied by local experts, students critically explored the making and unmaking of heritage in Pakistan. This documentation immerses the audience in multiple facets of another Pakistan, a Pakistan that is not widely known to international audiences. We will explore sounds, visuals, and local wisdom that are essential for imagining an alternative vision of heritage for the fifth-largest population of the world.

Student Presentation. 30.06.2023, Spiegelzelt am Universitätsplatz.

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Free tickets available here: https://tickets.feelit.de/