The importance of regular networking
In the seminar organized by TRANSIT and GINTL-India on October 14th, there was a general agreement that despite rising attention to and investment in research on India and the Global South, these attempts should be further interconnected to utilize existing resources. Regular multidisciplinary and discipline-specific seminars and workshops should facilitate transnational academic collaboration between Finnish and Indian researchers.
Inclusion of local voices and equal participation of Indian partners in bilateral academic collaboration enable knowledge production beyond the Western frameworks and produce contextualized knowledge about India.
Emerging themes
As a networking event with an interdisciplinary approach, the seminar brought together researchers and relevant partners with different expertise. The presentations and discussions focused on topics such as migration from Europe to India and inter-state migration in India. Migration was analyzed from economic, political, and technological perspecives as well as how it influences the local population.
In the field of educational research, the focus was on education policy and education governance. The participants shed light on the remarkable development of datafication, digitalization, and open governance in India. Outside India, these trends have also become prominent especially in the (post) COVID-19 context. The discourse, policies, and implementation of digitalization and datafication in India (and the Global South) should be further investigated in relation to other relevant concepts and may engender novel insights on the (de)colonization of knowledge.
The seminar materials can be found below:
Presentation 1: Lifestyle Migrants Searching for a Better Life in India
Presentation 3: Open data governance in education – India as a case study
Presentation 4: Teacher education in India: Policy context, concerns, and transitions.
Presentation 6: The role of the Nordic Center in India in supporting scholars working in India