The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT-Madras hosts an academic conference every year. One of the few of its kind organised with the active involvement of students, the recently concluded three-day event saw the participation of postgraduate students and research scholars from around a dozen institutions all over the world. The decision to open up the doors of the event beyond the undergraduate level saw a marked improvement in the depth of research presented over the course of the weekend.
This year’s conference sought to shed light on the various aspects of the process of migration. Speakers touched upon subjects ranging from the circulation of ideas and film (Dr. Ravi Vasudevan, Centre for Study of Developing Societies) and the construction of illegality in the Indian subcontinent (Dr. Priya Kumar, University of Delhi) to internal labour migration (Dr. Ravi Srivastava, Jawaharlal Nehru University) and reconfiguring citizenship (Dr. Aparna Rayaprol, University of Hyderabad).
The interactive session on ‘Diasporic Loyalties and National Anxieties’ (Dr. Radha Hegde, New York University) as well as the film screening of Fatih Akin’s ‘Edge of Heaven’ followed by a panel discussion chaired by Dr. Ira Bhaskar (Jawaharlal Nehru University) allowed the audience to interact directly with leading academicians from the field.
Diverse themes Aswin Vijayan, one of the department secretaries, said, "We started off with an ambitious target of 125 papers and were thrilled not only to have achieved it, but also reached out to institutions far away from Chennai. Entries came in from Tripura University, Georg-August-Universität and Emory University. This reflected wonderfully in the wide range of themes the conference was able to touch upon.” Subjects of presentation included the Malabar migration and the Kasturirangan agitation, reclaiming the Right to Travel, the role of civil society and the gap in governance, multiple text-specific literary analyses (Gaiman’s ‘American Gods’ and Benyamin’s ‘Aadujeevitham’ among others) as well as community-specific research (the Armenians of Chennai, folktales of Reang, etc).
Academic exposure January 19 ushered in the first pre-conference lecture given by acclaimed journalist P. Sainath. Apart from a record number of entries and participants, the team hosted poster presentations, allowing the presentation of research ideas in multiple forms. “As the youngest delegate there, I found the last few days both very new and helpful It was my first exposure to academic conferences, and it taught me to engage with issues of current importance. Considering the proportion of migrants who are young, I decided to study the relationship between the two and how policy needs to concentrate on this stratum more,” says Nabina Chakrabory from Fergusson College.
In its own small way, the event pushed its boundaries in an attempt to encourage the humanities and social sciences, daring to raise questions and trying to answer them.
Yashasvini is a student of the Department of Humanities, IIT Madras.
