Gandhinagar: Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) and the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi, are jointly organising an ‘International Conference on Urban Transformations, Youth Aspirations and Education in India’ on February 20-21, 2020. The two-day conference intends to evolve an inter-disciplinary engagement on the nature of urban transformations and the youth in India while understanding policy dynamics in these areas. It will also attempt to understand the challenges to educational access and skills provision for the youth and the constraints of rural-urban migration, social caste background, and peri-urban locations.
Dr Bhushan Patwardhan, Vice Chairman, University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi, will be the Chief Guest at the inaugural program. Dr Patwardhan is a biomedical scientist and a Fellow of National Academy Sciences (India) and National Academy of Medical Sciences (India). He has worked on several policy making bodies including Task Forces of National Knowledge Commission, Planning Commission and has been a consultant to the World Health Organization, Geneva. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine published by Elsevier and is on the Editorial Boards of many reputed Journals. He will speak at the Inaugural Panel on Education along with Prof Sudhir Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar; and Prof Pankaj Chandra, Vice Chancellor, Ahmedabad University.
There will also be two keynote lectures on each day of the event. Prof Craig Jeffrey, Professor of Geography at the University of Melbourne, Australia and Director, Australia India Institute, will deliver the first Keynote Lecture titled “Fresh Contact: Empowering Youth Innovators in South Asia” on February 20. Prof Jeffrey is the author of the book Time pass: Youth, Class and the Politics of Waiting, which is a study of youth which is a study of youth aspirations in small-town North India. The second Keynote Lecture will be delivered by Prof John Harriss, Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Canada, titled “Aspiration, Opportunity, Mobility: the prospects for development among India’s youth”, on February 21.
The first day of the conference will also have a short film screening titled – ‘Lifelines: documenting social change in the Indian Himalayas’ by Jane Dyson, Professor Anthropology at the University of Melbourne.
Many scholars and experts from India and abroad are invited as speakers during various sessions that will cover a wide range of subjects such as ‘Educational Conundrums of Indian Youth’; ‘Youth and Political Mobilisation’; ‘Studying the Youth: Methods and Approaches’; ‘Peri-urban/Small Town Youth Aspirations’; and ‘Urban Landscapes: Marginality and Circulation’.
Postgraduate and doctoral students, senior undergraduate students, faculty and researchers in Humanities and Social Sciences from all over the country are going to participate in this international conference. More details about the conference and speakers can be found on the conference website:http://events.iitgn.ac.in/2020/UTYAEI/index.php
