Friday 26 January 2024, 13:00-14:30 GMT
A participatory, cross-disciplinary, and innovative decolonial educational programme on intersectional justice in India.
Hybrid event! Face to face event: Seminar Room 728 in the UCL Institute of Education. If joining online you will receive the Zoom link in your email once you register.
Introduction
We cordially invite you to attend the launch of our public pedagogy programme – india & me:engage.reflect.act*. This innovative educational programme is cross-disciplinary and decolonial. It is designed for anyone interested in learning about education’s role in contributing to intersectional justice in India, including students, researchers, educators, policymakers, development practitioners, and public members.
Partly funded by UCL Global Engagement Funds to facilitate the university’s international collaborations in developing public-facing educational initiatives, this programme is co-constructed by a female-led team of scholars from across religion, caste, region, and class backgrounds, committed to addressing intersectional injustices in India. The programme is an outcome of an extensive three-year collaboration between colleagues, including scholars, civil society stakeholders, activists, artists, students, lawyers, and members of the public from across India and its diaspora. Content and pedagogy are based on interdisciplinary research, grassroots insights, and a robust trial run and peer-reviewing process and are supported by the “Do No Harm principle”.
Format of the launch
We will use participatory methods to launch the programme from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm London time. After that, from 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm, we will have an informal social networking session to explore opportunities for collaboration. Refreshments will be available for those attending in person.
Location
This is a hybrid event. When you register, you will be asked if you will join the launch in London or online.
What is the Programme?
india & me is designed as a digital “cafe” space to un-learn dominant ways of thinking, researching and educating about the social, political and cultural in India and our role in the past, present, and future. We do this by collectively engaging in activities challenging our everyday comforts and discomforts around gender, caste, religion, and more.
This groundbreaking programme uses art to disrupt conventional ways of working with marginalised populations in India. The versatile, interactive and participatory approach is grounded in intersectional feminist praxis. It facilitates a deconstruction of concepts of caste and race, class, patriarchy, gender and sexuality, religion, nationalism and borders, ableism, colonialism, language, and conflict intersectionally in a way that seeks to unpack privilege and amplify egalitarian insights emerging from the struggles of historically marginalised populations in India, offering new critical insights for engaging with India. This pathbreaking approach disrupts conventional ways of working by treating margins as a site of knowledge production.
What is the purpose of launching on 26th January?
26th January is a special day in India because its Constitution came into force on this day in 1950. While the British Raj ended in South Asia in August 1947, it was only with the coming of the Constitution that India became a republic. The Indian Constitution embodied a new moral imagination, harboured alternative futures and thereby presented a sharp political critique of the context in which it was produced. The indelible imprint the Indian Constitution-makers left on the world was not an unintended consequence but one that was prefigured in the act of writing itself. Writing the Constitution was about empowerment, self-reclamation, defiance and self-assertion. It is in this spirit that we have chosen to introduce our public pedagogy programme – india & me on India’s Republic Day. It addresses the dissonance that historically marginalised groups experience with the celebratory narrative of India as told from a masculine, statist and savarna-centric perspective.
Collaborators and contributors:
The programme involved 70 contributors from 23 universities in India, Australia, the UK, and the USA, 6 civil society and research institutions, and members of the public. Additionally, there were 9 UCL alumni and students who were engaged in the development process. The collaboration was cross-disciplinary, encompassing diverse fields such as film, art, gender, history, international development, labour, law, literature, management, marketing, mathematics, media, music, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.
The following individuals played a significant role in facilitating this process:
- Dr Laila Kadiwal, University College London
- Dr Swati Kamble, an independent researcher and a Dalit feminist
- Aparna Vaidik, Ashoka University
- Dr Lotika Singha, writer
- Ketan Dandare, University College London
- Dr Kavita Ramkrishnan, University of East Anglia
- Dr Manisha Madapthy, University of Hyderabad
- Usha Raman, University of Hyderabad
- Arvind Rajagopal, alumnus, University College London
- Hera Shakil, University of Chicago
- Riya Kartha, University of Oxford
Further information:
To learn more about india & me visit: www.indiaandme.com
*The programme name “india & me: engage.reflect.act” is written all in lower case as a decolonising practice, inspired by the critical Black feminist bell hooks.
Refreshments for face-to-face meeting:
We have arranged refreshments and kindly request a three-day notice for cancellations. Thank you.