EASAS European Doctoral Workshop

February 11–13, 2025

Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers-Paris (France)

Call for applications

On behalf of the European Association of South Asian Studies (EASAS), the newly established Centre for South Asian and Himalayan Studies (CESAH) will host the next European doctoral workshop in South Asian Studies. This event will take place from February, 11–13 on Campus Condorcet (Paris-Aubervilliers).

The EASAS doctoral workshop is open to PhD students from all disciplines within the social sciences, who are engaged in South Asian Studies. This workshop provides participants with a unique opportunity to meet leading scholars and fellow PhD students from across Europe in a stimulating academic environment.

Participants are expected to share a draft—such as an excerpt from their thesis, a journal article, a book chapter, or any work in progress (4,000 to 6,000 words maximum)—as long as it relates to their core PhD research. During the workshop, each paper will be introduced by another participant and subsequently discussed by a senior scholar.

Venue: CESAH – UMR 8077, EHESS/Campus Condorcet, 2 Cours des Humanités 93322 Aubervilliers, France

For further information please click here.

28th European Conference on South Asian Studies (ECSAS)

Heidelberg - Germany, 1- 4 October 2025

CALL FOR PANELS IS OPEN

The panel submission is open from 24 May until 24 July, 2024. Please go to the conference website: ecsas2025.com All panel proposals must include: the title of the panel, the name(s), affiliation(s) and the EASAS membership number of the convener(s), a contact e-mail, and a short abstract (300 characters) and long abstract (1700 characters) that explain the panel topic. The panel abstracts should highlight the innovative elements of the panel. A tentative list of presenters and their email addresses must also be included to demonstrate the viability of the panel. Please note that all panel proposals and presentations will be in English.

EASAS membership Please note that all panel conveners must be current EASAS members. It is possible to pay membership fees at the time of panel submission. Membership comes with many additional benefits, for further information see: https://www.easas.eu/become-a-member/

The ECSAS is the largest South Asian Studies Conference in Europe, with more than 50 panels held over 4 days, featuring two keynotes and roundtable discussions on topics of importance to the field. As such, there is a limit on scholars convening more than one panel, or from presenting more than one paper in the conference (it is however acceptable to convene one panel and present one paper). This is does not preclude applicants from submitting more than one panel or paper proposals, but in the event of multiple acceptances, the convener and/or presenter will be asked to choose only one. One of the objectives of the ECSAS is to encourage international collaboration, especially between scholars based in European and South Asian academic spaces, although scholars from all over the world are welcome. Panels which demonstrably feature international collaboration are strongly preferred.

THE CALL IS NOW CLOSED!

                          Call to Organize the

EASAS Doctoral Workshop 2024/2025

Deadline is 15 April 2024

The Call to Universities and Higher Education Institutions to host the EASAS Doctoral Workshop to be held in 2024 or 2025 is now open. The workshop will give Ph.D. students an opportunity to receive feedback on their theses from senior scholars and fellow Ph.D. candidates who are also working on South Asian topics. In addition, it will create networks between young students of South Asia and help them develop contacts with others. The doctoral workshop is envisaged as a two-day event for a maximum of 16 Ph.D. candidates and six faculty members from European universities, to be held at a host European university.

THE CALL IS NOW CLOSED!

                               Call for Proposals for

               Academic Workshops 2024 /2025

The call is open now for the proposal of workshops to be held in 2024 or 2025. The workshop must involve more than two EU countries and preferably invite some scholars and post-docs based in South Asia. The workshop can be organized either as the basis for the preparation of papers for publication, or as an event to map out and develop new research projects. Proposals can also include comparative discussion of other parts of the world, as long as there is a strong focus on South Asia. EASAS can support workshops with an amount of up to 3,000 for on-site events and up to 1,000 for events planned in an online format.

THE CALL IS NOW CLOSED!

Workshop - Call for Papers 

Deliberation, Participation and Democracy in Contemporary South Asia: 

Spaces, Practices, Voices 

Dublin City University, Dublin, 10-11 November 2023

The Ireland India Institute and the lrish Association of South Asian Studies at Dublin City University invite paper proposals for an academic workshop on "Deliberation, Participation, and Democracy in Contemporary South Asia: Spaces, Practices, Voices" to be held in person at Dublin City University on 10-11 November 2023. The event is supported by a grant from the European Association for South Asian Studies (EASAS). 

The past decade, arguably, has shifted the focus of conversations across South Asia from discussions about deepening and consolidation of democracy to questioning its very nature and workings. A populist shift in national politics across the region, and the world, and the ramifications of such developments for inclusive politics is understudied and under-analysed. The spaces for participation and growing forrns of alternative citizen assertions, indicate emerging actors, their demand for representation and "to be seen". While participation in "traditional" politics such as voting and party membership may have declined, there has also been an explosion of activities that seek to "do democracy differently". At the same time, debates about 'who gets what, when and how' have become more polarised and polarising. In South Asia, a region familiar with protracted conflict, intractable disputes over land, borders and identity, democratic processes have prevailed against the odds, but social, political order is often precarious and social cohesion threatened on many fronts. 

We are particularly interested in papers that address the following topics: 

·       Emerging methodologies in the study of deliberative practices and spaces.

·       Interactions between micro and macro spaces of political action and their interrelated role in shaping inclusive politics and participation.

·       Relationships between power, legitimacy, and authority.

·       Tensions and forms of resistances between/within different sites of engagement in the socio­political sphere of South Asian societies.

·      How spaces of participation/deliberation are reinforcing or challenging existing exclusions, hegemonies, inequalities. Barriers to pluralism and existence of political differences.

Application guidelines:

Please submit your workshop application by filling the Google form with the required information, including an abstract

(max. 300 words) and a biographical note (max. 100 words) by Friday, August 4th 2023. 

For further information please click here.

THE CALL IS NOW CLOSED! 

Call 2023 EASAS Research Student Awards

One of the stated aims of the European Association for South Asian Studies is to encourage and support young scholars working in the field of South Asian Studies. In pursuit of this aim, the Association is offering awards linked to its biennial conference. Awards are to be made for the most outstanding papers by currently registered research students presenting at the conference.

At the 27th EASAS conference in Turin, up to three awards of €300 each will be made. All current PhD students fully registered and presenting at the conference may submit their paper for consideration. The submitted papers will be considered by a panel of judges selected by the EASAS Council.

Details

Submission criteria:

• Authors must be currently registered PhD students.

• Papers must be delivered at the conference.

• Papers must be written in English.

• Papers must be full and complete (including references and bibliography).

• Papers must be in the range 6000 to 8000 words.

• Papers must include an abstract up to 200 words.

• Papers must be submitted by email to office@easas.eu by 5 July 2023 23:59 CEST.

• Please include the subject line ‘EASAS Research Student Awards’ in your email.

Submissions that do not meet all the above criteria will not be considered.

Assessment criteria:

• The papers will be assessed in terms of their contribution to the field, the quality of their research data, and their ability to convey the key argument(s) clearly and convincingly.

• After these primary considerations have been taken into account, the panel will hope to make awards that reflect the full range of disciplines represented at the conference.

• A named panel of judges will assess the qualities of the papers under consideration.

• The awards will be based on the written work, not its presentation (although the paper must be presented at the conference).

THE CALL IS NOW CLOSED! 

The Sixth EASAS Academic Workshop – 20 April 2023

Ancient Wisdoms for Modern Times: Analysing Contemporary Challenges through the Lens of Tantra and Shamanism

‘Ancient Wisdoms for Modern Times: Analysing Contemporary Challenges through the Lens of Tantra and Shamanism’ is a workshop organised as part of the EASAS Academic Workshops scheme, in collaboration with the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies and Lyon Catholic University

THE CALL IS NOW CLOSED!

EASAS resumes funding of academic workshops. The call is open now for the proposal of workshops to be held in 2022 or 2023. The workshop must involve more than two EU countries and preferably invite some scholars and post-docs based in South Asia. The workshop can be organized either as the basis for the preparation of papers for publication, or as an event to map out and develop new research projects. Proposals can also include comparative discussion of other parts of the world, as long as there is a strong focus on South Asia. EASAS can support workshops with an amount of up to € 3,000 for on-site events and up to € 1,000 for events planned in an online format.

THE CALL IS NOW CLOSED!

The Call to Universities and Higher Education Institutions to host the 2022/2023 EASAS Doctoral Workshop is now open.
The workshop will give PhD students an opportunity to receive feedback on their theses from senior scholars and fellow PhD candidates who are also working on South Asian topics. In addition, it will create networks between PhD candidates working on South Asia and help them develop contacts with others. The doctoral workshop is envisaged as a two-day event for a maximum of 16 PhD candidates and 6 senior scholars based in Europe, to be held at a host European university.

The host university will organize the workshop and arrange board and lodging for students as well as the invited senior scholars. The selection of the host university will be made by the EASAS Council. The EASAS will financially assist with accommodation and board for students and senior scholars at the workshop with a sum up to € 3,000. Participants will have to make their own travel arrangements. In case a host university wants to organize a workshop as an online event, EASAS support funding will be capped at € 1,000. Please note that the EASAS membership is mandatory for all participants (join here: https://www.easas.eu/become-a-member/; pay your fees here: https://dashboard.easas.eu/).

THE CALL IS NOW CLOSED!

One of the stated aims of the European Association for South Asian Studies is to encourage and support young scholars working in the field of South Asian Studies. In pursuit of this aim, the Association offered awards linked to its biennial conference. Awards were to be made for the most outstanding papers by currently registered research students presenting at the conference.

EASAS Research Student Awards – ECSAS 2023 Turin

The jury of the EASAS Research Student Award 2023, composed of members of the EASAS Council (Sreya Banerjea, Monika Browarczyk, Niladri Chatterjee, Alessandra Consolaro, Sanjukta Das Gupta, Martin Fuchs, Ute Hüsken, Martin Ganeszle, Anna Sailer, Nitin Sinha, Danuta Stasik, and Heinz Werner Wessler), following the announcement that up to three prizes of €300 would be awarded at the 27th ECSAS conference in Turin, evaluated sixteen submitted papers. 

Two awardees whose papers came at the top of the ranking list are:

Kartik Maini (The University of Chicago, USA) for the paper “Advaita in the First Person: Saṃnyāsīs, Scribes, and the Sociality of Experience in Early Modern Maharashtra”, presented at Panel 31 The Forms, Genres and Languages of Early Modern Indian Philosophy

and

Zainab Abdali (Rice University, USA) for the paper “The New Indian Woman and Her Others in Alankrita Shrivastava’s Films”, presented at Panel 02 Rewriting Hindu Women within Contemporary Popular Media.

These two awards are worth € 300.

In third place came two papers with the same number of points. The jury has decided to award an ex aequo prize of €150 to both authors of these papers:

Sagnik Kar (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany) for the paper “Time guns, Time balls and Public Clocks: The ‘publicness’ of time in colonial Calcutta in the late 19th-early 20th centuries”, presented at Panel 24 Timely Histories: A Social History of Time in South Asia

and

Ge Ge (University of Vienna, Austria) for the paper “Fowl or Owl? The Dual Identity of the Avian Sage Kaṇāda”, presented at Panel 17 More Than Human: Animal-Human Relations in Pre-Modern South Asia.

We extend our sincere congratulations to all award winners and wish you much success in your research work!

• The fifth EASAS Workshop on Price of Belonging took place at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld University, Germany, from 12 to 13 July 2018. During the two-day focused discussion group, it was intended to jointly work through and deepen understanding of human sacrifice that belonging implies by focusing upon specific case studies in different South Asian countries. The aim of the workshop was to look into the interior of human bonds that are less about a relationship between the self and a different ‘Other’ – an already established approach to
  investigate belonging and more of a relationship between the self and a distinct ‘Same’, a perspective that will guide us to the hidden yet scarcely understood spheres of belonging.
  The following questions were addressed: How do collectives make claims upon individual persons? How do individuals gain and secure their membership? How are individual and collective commitments (re)negotiated in everyday situations? What makes some people stay in a formation while others opt for an exit? What happens to those who
  are unable or unwilling to bear the costs? Themes of interest include: consequences of class, caste, ethnic and gendered belonging and membership; inter-marriage; individual navigation through collective constellations.

• The fourth EASAS Workshop on Worker-Contractors: Refiguring low-level labour market intermediaries in contemporary India took place at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK, on 7 July 2017.
  This one-day symposium was to examine on the formation and working practices of low-level contractors, understood as key figures underpinning India’s economic boom.

• The third EASAS Workshop on ‘Potent Substances’ between Asia and Europe: Redefining materia medica in Tibetan and Himalayan Medicine and Buddhist Ritual took place at the University of Vienna, Austria, from 1 to 4 September 2016. This workshop focused on how medical and ritual substances are identified and categorised in Tibetan traditions, as well as possible impacts on their ‘potency’ within recent EU pharmaceutical regulations.

• The second EASAS Workshop on South Asian Apparel Workers in the Post-Rana Plaza World: Worker Health Beyond the Factory Floor took place at the University of Edinburgh, UK, from 15 to 16 July 2016. This workshop focused on worker health in the garment industry since the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013.

• The first EASAS Workshop on Opening Up Intimate Spaces: Women Writing and Autobiography in India took place at the Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan, Poland, from 19 to 20 May 2016. This workshop focused on Indian women’s writings in India. Most studies of India have tended to focus on the public and the political spheres, seeing them entirely in masculine terms. The fact of women’s much lower literacy levels, their containment within ideologies of femininity and domesticity, compounded by the deafening silence of the imperial archive on women’s experiences have led to the relegation of women’s writings to the margins of mainstream Indian history. This workshop follows an important shift in studies of Indian history towards a reappraisal of women’s roles in the making of pre-modern and modern India by focusing on their writings about their lives.

• The 12th  EASAS PhD Workshop took place at the University of Stuttgart from 19 to 21 September
  2019. Participants hailed from ten countries, in alphabetical order, from Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Twelve students’ chapters were presented by one of the fellow students and commented upon by a senior member of staff. The format of presenting and discussing chapters followed the usual pattern employed at EASAS doctoral workshops.
  The Stuttgart workshop had lively and intense discussions on all presented topics, which ranged from historical to anthropological, and linguistic to performative subject areas. The in-depth discussions offered students with maximum quality feedback on their work in progress.
  The 12th EASAS PhD Workshop was convened by Dr. Margret Frenz, FRHistS, FHEA, University of Stuttgart, and Dr. Georg Berkemer, Humboldt University Berlin.

• The 11th EASAS PhD Workshop in South Asian Studies was held from 22 to 24 September 2017 in Naples at L'Orientale University of Naples. The EASAS Doctoral Workshops take place annually and aim at giving PhD students the oppertunity to discuss their thesis with fellow PhD students and senior scholars who work on South Asia.
  The 11th EASAS Doctoral Workshop was convened by Dr. Stefania Cavaliere (L'Orientale University, Naples) and Prof. Dr. Alessandra Consolaro (University of Turin).