March 16 - 22, 2024

KSS is a week-long immersive residential programme that introduces high-school students to a wide variety of established and emerging fields of inquiry not covered in school curricula. At KSS, students get to broaden their perspectives, deepen their interests, and get a glimpse into the world of higher learning. If you know someone, let them know about the opportunity to engage in diverse, unique, interwoven courses.

Registration to Krea Summer School 2024 is now open. For aspirants who wish to know more about the programme, two webinars have been arranged, one on 23 March and the other on 30 March, 2024 at 6.00 PM.

Know more about Summer School

Webinar Registration link

Professor Bishnu N Mohapatra, Director of the Moturi Satyanarayana Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Krea University and Professor of Politics, SIAS (School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences), Krea University was invited by the CHCI to anchor the India /South Asia report. With the help of thirteen critical essays and twelve short video conversations, the India/South Asia report depicts the humanities’ active presence in plural locations, diverse forms, and multiple tongues. Several people were involved in the making of this report, including twenty-nine scholars/researchers drawn from universities, research institutions, and civil society organisations connected to vast swathes of academic disciplines such as history, literary studies, social anthropology, social theory, aesthetics, and performance studies, feminist studies, philosophy, cultural studies, linguistics, and musicology.

The report can be accessed here

The Frontline Magazine recently published an article by Dr Sambaiah Gundimeda, Associate Professor of Politics, SIAS, Krea University titled Consent or Coercion? Looking back at the Constituent Assembly Debate on Uniform Civil Code.  This article critically analyses the Constituent Assembly's discourse on the Uniform Civil Code. By analysing the arguments and counter-arguments of the proponents and opponents of the UCC, respectively, this article argues on the importance of securing the consent of the affected people, and the responsibility of the majority in facilitating the will of the minority. 

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Shweta Rani, Faculty Teaching Associate at  Krea-CWP (Centre for Writing and Pedagogy, Krea University) has been invited to deliver a talk on 26 March, 2024 at 3.45 pm at CSH-CPR Urban Workshop series, organised by CSH (Centre de Sciences Humaines) and CPR (Centre for Policy Research). The title of the talk is Khula Area: On the Urban and the Pathological. Pathology is one of the key factors that informs and structures urban spaces. To explore the relationship between the urban and the pathological, this talk trails the

Aedes mosquito, the dengue vector, to trace the intersection of civic, social, ecological, and political in the everyday life of Delhi. Since 1996, the Indian capital city has faced almost a yearly outbreak of dengue, a mosquito-borne viral infection. To control the possibility of yet another dengue epidemic, the gaze of public health authorities primarily focuses on the areas considered inherently ‘dirty’- localities of East Delhi at the margin of the city, situated at Yamuna riverfront, populated by working-class migrants living in the unauthorised colonies. The residents of such areas have to deal with the absence of basic urban infrastructure while also being under the stringent administrative glare for pest control.

Picking up on the usage of the colloquial expression ‘khula area’ by inhabitants of these areas and their administrators to express the ungovernable stubbornness of such regions, this ethnographic shows that while the state works to localize the pathological, it remains fuzzy and deterritorialised. By analysing narratives around the ‘Khula Area’ this work explores how a city is imagined, inhabited, and governed through the prism of the pathological and all things that fall within its shadow.

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A field trip was organised for Physics majors at SIAS, Krea University to the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam, on 13 March, 2024. The students were accompanied by Professor T R Govindarajan, Visiting Professor in Physics, SIAS, Krea University and Dr Sushant Raut, Assistant Professor of Physics, SIAS, Krea University. The students visited labs and spoke to experts from the Fast Breeder Test Reactor, Material Sciences Group, and Environmental Assessment Division. Apart from the scientific agenda, the possibility of student internships at the centre was also discussed.

Sathyanarayanan Ramachandran, Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor of Marketing, IFMR Graduate School of Business, Krea University, conducted a Workshop on the Case Method during the International Conference on Marketing Research 2024 (ICMR '24). This event was organised by Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA) in partnership with the Albers School of Business, Seattle University, US, held on March 15, 2024.

The workshop covered topics such as changing cohorts, classroom psychology, Bloom's revised taxonomy in the context of the new millennium, and the genesis of the Harvard Business School Case Method. The workshop also discussed the challenges associated with case discussions and provided participants with various strategies to effectively handle them.

As part of Krea Computer Science Talk on 20 March, 2024, Dr Janakiraman Viraraghavan, Assistant Professor in the Integrated Circuits and Systems group of the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras led a talk, Automation: A Way of Life, Not a Technical Skill!

Automation and coding are often perceived as textbook skills employed solely for technical tasks in the workplace. However, this perception couldn't be further from reality. A closer examination of those skilled in automation reveals that it is, in fact, a way of life. Coding simplifies tasks in various scenarios, and this talk focuses on one such unique opportunity presented by the pandemic: organising an online convocation. The task at hand involved stitching together over 200 videos in a specific sequence, each requiring a particular background and the student's photo. The specifications provided are vague, leaving the designer to accommodate them within the code. In such cases, we often compromise efficiency for perfection. However, the precise definitions of these terms are not set in stone, and it's crucial to recognise that one size does not fit all.

Through this interactive session, Dr Janakiraman Viraraghavan elucidated the intangible aspects of automating such tasks and highlighted some good coding principles—a must-have skill for software development.

Dr Rama Devi, Visiting Assistant Professor, SIAS, Krea University was invited to deliver a lecture at a National Seminar on "Gendering Social Relations: Caste, Wage Work, Literature and Law" organised by Saveetha School of Law, Chennai. The title of the talk was Domesticity and Autonomy: Occupational Imageries and Employable Skills of Educated Dalit Women. Education is conceived as a powerful and political instrument to gain autonomy, agency, and empowerment for marginalised communities.

For women, it holds the promise of liberation from their economic dependence on men by creating several possibilities to gain economic independence, assertive expression of voice, and navigating the tight grasp of patriarchal norms in their everyday lives. This lecture traces how education intersects with gender, norms of domesticity, and modern occupational aspirations to reproduce the ideal of respectable women in the neo-liberal economy. 

In some other great news, a paper co-authored paper by Dr Rama Devi titled, We Know What is Good for Her: Hunar and Respectable Work for Women has been published in the Sociological Bulletin. 

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The Sun, a star that supports life on Earth by providing essential heat and light, can also be hazardous to human technology both on the ground and in space, disrupting normal life. The physical conditions in space that affect human technology are referred to as Space Weather. Common consequences of space weather are satellite drag, satellite sensor degradation, effects of geomagnetically induced currents on the power grid and pipelines, radiation threat to crews of high-flying aircraft and astronauts, and high-frequency communication outages in the polar regions. Space weather can be traced to the variability in the mass and photon output from the Sun on various time scales. Variability, manifested as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and solar flares, is the key source of severe space weather. Solar energetic particle (SEP) events and geomagnetic storms are the two primary space weather consequences of CMEs. This talk presents observational details of these phenomena and outlines ongoing efforts by scientists to understand and mitigate the impacts of space weather.

Register here

Krea University’s ecosystem is built on the exchange of knowledge, ideas, insights, and meaningful collaborations and Krea prides itself on its ever-growing network of Research Centres synonymous with impact-led research. 

This World Water Day, we are thrilled to announce the series Architects of Impact, turning the spotlight on the pivotal work done by our Research Centres. Bringing to you the first edition, in collaboration with Water, Environment, Land, and Livelihoods (WELL) Labs.

And here is a video from WELL Labs that deep dives into deciphering, understanding and solving Bengaluru’s Water Crisis.

Admissions to the BA (Honours) and BSc (Honours) at SIAS, and 5 year Integrated BBA+MBA Programme, and 2 year MBA Programme at IFMR GSB are now open. If you know someone who aspires to join Krea, kindly share the respective programme page links for application.