NEWSLETTER
April 27, 2018
Funded by a Mittal Institute Winter Grant, Ph.D. candidate Bronwen Gulkis spent time in London and Berlin studying manuscripts and folios collected by Mughal princes. "Roughly analogous to a contemporary museum exhibit, an album might combine paintings, calligraphy, and textual selections to suggest an artistic theme or a historical narrative. In doing so, albums also reveal the larger story of art making and consumption in Mughal India," she says.
The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute’s Annual Symposium takes place on May 4, 2018. This year’s theme is  “Knowledge Translation: Across Disciplines, Geographies and Action” . The event is free and open to the public. In his annual letter,  Tarun Khanna , Director of The Mittal Institute, Harvard University, and Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School, assesses an important 12 month period for the institute.

If you are the first in your family to attend college and you are based in South Asia, the Middle East or Africa, apply now for our Second Annual Crossroads Emerging Leaders Program. It is a collaboration with an important alumni organization, the Harvard Business School Club of the Gulf Cooperation Council, to create a fantastic, fully-funded opportunity for talented students. The application deadline is May 31, 2018. 
In this interview, Straus Center Director Narayan Khandekar talks about conservation, Harvard's Rothko paintings, and preserving fine paintings. "This was a place of pioneering research, and is a place where new research and approaches to conservation still happen," he says."Much of our work is dedicated to the exhibitions we hold in the Harvard Art Museums galleries; to understanding the materials and techniques of artists."
Over the course of his career, John Naslund has researched how digital communication and social media affects our mental state. This journal article specifically focuses on mental disorders. "Digital technology holds promise for improving access to, and quality of, mental health care. We reviewed evidence on the use of mobile, online, and other remote technologies for treatment and prevention of mental disorders."
According to Vikram Patel, suicide has been a public health crisis in India for many years. In this opinion piece, he states "Conservative social customs are poisoning the lives of our youth, fueled by forces which champion antiquated views of our society, stratified by class, caste and religion. If young people are the hope for our nation’s future, we must bring hope into their lives by entitling them with the freedom to choose how they live and whom they love."
As part of the Tata Trusts and The Mittal Institute partnership, Ashok Gadgil has redesigned an efficient cookstove that reduces the need for users to gather wood, which can be a dangerous task for refugees. In a talk last May at Cal Future Forum, Gadgil argued that Berkeley’s work at the forefront of cookstove design can help women around the world, producing outsize benefits from modest investments in “small” technology.
CAMBRIDGE EVENTS
Friday, April 27, 12:15-2 PM, CGIS South S250
Over the course of this talk, Jinah Kim will discuss her observations on works known as "portable visions." As history and populations shift, they bring particular artifacts with them, such as manuscripts, paintings, and sculptures. To provide additional context for these pieces, she will be looking at manuscripts and Buddhism from Alchi to Borobudur.
Friday, April 27, 2-4 PM, CGIS South, S354
As part of the Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics Series, Alison Post will talk about her research, which examines several themes: the politics of regulating privatized infrastructure, the varying ability of sub-national governments to provide infrastructure services effectively following the decentralization wave of the 1990s, and the politics of urban policy.
Friday, April 27, 2-5 PM, Bow and Arrow Press
In collaboration with Harvard’s Bow and Arrow Press, The Mittal Institute’s Artist in Residence Kabi Raj Lama will lead a three-hour demonstration and workshop on Japanese Woodcut Print-making. The workshop will begin with Kabi Raj sharing his lithography and woodcut prints. He will discuss his print-making journey and then demonstrate how to make prints by hand using water-based inks and a special tool.
Monday, April 30, 9 AM-12:45 PM, CGIS South S010
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Dean Michelle Williams will kick off the program at 9:00 am with opening remarks. The symposium will feature two keynotes, delivered by Piyush Tewari, MPA and Adnan A. Hyder, MD, MPH, PhD, and two panels of experts on Road Traffic Injury Prevention and Response. The event is co-sponsored by the Harvard Global Health Institute and the SaveLIFE Foundation.
May 4, 10:30 AM-6 PM, CGIS South
The Mittal Institute's eighth Annual Symposium will explore Knowledge Translation from the vantages of arts conservation, youth and mental health, and the role of science and technology in emerging economies. The event is free and open to the public.
COMMUNITY NEWS
Last week, between April 12th and 13th four instances of academic repression took place on university campuses in different parts in Pakistan. As a response, four academics from the HGSE and Pakistani universities penned a letter outlining their concerns. "All four events are part of a wider trend that stifles critical thinking and discussion on university campuses. As faculty members, we believe the university must be a space where faculty and students are free to share ideas and engage in thoughtful analysis."
COMMUNITY EVENTS
Tuesday, May 1, 4-6 PM, Gutman Gallery
Friday, May 4, 4:30 PM, Longfellow 319/320
Thursday, May 10, 6-7:30 PM, Gutman Conference Center
FLASHBACK FRIDAY
On May 17, 2014, Harvard was reverberating with echoes of poets from different regions of South Asia at the 18th annual South Asian Poets Meeting, cosponsored by The Mittal Institute. The theme of the event for this year was "Matrubhasha," which means "Mother Tongue" in Hindi. Twenty-seven poets from India, Bangladesh and Nepal participated in the event. Among the participants from India, there were Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Kashmiri, Kannada, Malayali, and Oriya recitations.