2021-22 Highlights

July 2021 - December 2021

SEPTEMBER

The academic year on campus kicked off with two events focusing on Afghanistan, just as the US’s withdrawal from the country was making headlines. The events covered Regional Perspectives on the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan. Page 15

OCTOBER

Two Visiting Artist Fellows–Bunu Dhungana, a photographer from Nepal, and Pragati Jain, a performance artist from India–arrived at Harvard for their eight-week research residencies. Page 34

NOVEMBER

The Institute’s Conservation Science Research and Training Program (CoSTAR), which aims to build up a temper of scientific studies for the conservation of art objects in India in conjunction with art historical studies, launched Module 2 with a roundtable discussion featuring experts from the Harvard Art Museums on how they engage with research in technical art history. Page 32

DECEMBER

The Mittal Institute welcomed new Executive Director Hitesh Hathi, who joined the Institute after two decades at one of Boston’s leading public radio stations. Page 10

The Lancet Citizens' Commission convened at the Mittal Institute's Delhi office for a theory of change workshop to clarify the scope of work and identify potential divergent points that needed to be addressed. Page 36

January 2022 - June 2022

JANUARY

Co-hosted with the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research (ABFER) and Harvard University’s Center for International Development (CID), the Mittal Institute kicked off a new speaker series, Post Pandemic: Driving Inclusive Growth in Asia, which aimed to catalyze research to take regional steps not only to recover, but also to chart a new economic course that ensures even the most vulnerable in society are included in the post-pandemic boom. Page 68

MARCH

The inaugural cohort of Mittal Institute India Fellows arrived in New Delhi. This new opportunity supports outstanding postdoctoral scholars in continuing their research out of the Delhi office. Mayanka Ambade focuses on healthcare utilization among older adults in India, and Ankur Tamuli Phukan researches festivals in contemporary Assam. Page 58

APRIL

The Mittal Institute awarded the largest class of faculty grant recipients in Institute history. Winning projects focused on issues in South Asia ranging from climate change to STEM education, disaster response to architecture. Page 28

Twenty-nine student grants were awarded for Winter 2021 and Summer 2022, providing Harvard undergraduate and graduate students opportunities to pursue internships at news outlets, study advanced Classical Tibetan and research stories of Sri Lankan Tamil migrants to the United States. Page 46

APRIL

Harvard students and affiliates had a unique opportunity to engage with one of India’s leading diplomats, Shivshankar Menon, in a closed-door session, Leadership Lessons in Global Diplomacy. Page 73

Nitasha Kaul of the University of Westminster gave a riveting talk on campus about Bhutan’s international relations and how the small Himalayan state is geopolitically mapped through an exhaustive and southward-oriented “inbetweenness” (“inbetween India and China”), a lens that is taken to be natural but, in fact, has shifted over the centuries. Page 74