Markaholic, the Marketing Committee of IFMR GSB, Krea University organized a 5-day long marketing event, ‘Markaz’. The event aimed to provide exposure about marketing to the first-year students in a non-academic manner where they were required to use their knowledge and creativity to answer a marketing quiz and four other rounds which were to test their marketing creativeness.
Pratyush Misra, Amit Kumar Sahoo and Shreyans Bandi were the winner, 1st runner up and 2nd runner up, respectively.
IWWAGE, an initiative of LEAD at Krea University, launched the first edition of its quarterly Magazine, Gender in Focus. The digital magazine showcases IWWAGE’s work in the intervention, research and advocacy space around key issues emerging as challenges for women’s economic empowerment in India. Gender in Focus presents a teaser of some of the work that IWWAGE is involved in, to address some of these challenges and in capturing best practices.
The inaugural issue brought voices from the field based on open-ended discussions held with our partner civil society organisations in four states, on how women and their groups have been affected by the pandemic and the lockdown. In addition, the issue provides snapshots of webinars conducted around the theme of COVID-19 and its impacts on women in different domains, and presents a new series of policy notes, to provide timely and actionable recommendations so that policies or programmes announced by governments help build not only a more resilient, but a gender responsive world post COVID. Besides the emphasis on COVID, this Gender in Focus issue presents summaries of the other exciting work that IWWAGE has been engaged in, such as, unpacking state-wise trends in labour force participation in India, the sectors that women work in and wage gaps; a new policy and programme series (also at the state level) to map what programmes exist and are targeted at women, and their effectiveness; women’s engagement with the gig economy and the precariousness they face while engaging with such platforms; and digital solutions that IWWAGE is working on with its tech partners in helping women gain information about their rights and entitlements. Gender in Focus can be downloaded from the website with this link- Gender in Focus.
With 800 hours of development and able support from the University’s Media Lab, four young Krea students have created a virtual tour of the state of the art Krea campus, using Minecraft tool.
With their relentless efforts, four young Krea students Arnav, Nikhil, Priyam and Shreya have re-created the Krea campus experience .
“In the midst of our online classes and Zoom coffee chats, we often thought of how the campus has been a hallmark in bringing us together as a cohort. Given the current state of the pandemic, a group of us decided to recreate our campus virtually to give our batch, faculty, and administration a sense of nostalgia while also giving the incoming batch an immersive and exciting preview of our campus”, adds a member of the student team.
For our students, the Krea campus goes beyond being just a physical space. Nestled in the green but equally well connected to urban zones, the campus imparts a sense of belonging as students and faculty co-create a learning experience.
Located 70 kilometres north of Chennai in Sri City, the 40-acre fully residential green campus is equipped with places to learn, engage and play. In line with its academic goals, Krea University’s ‘smart’ campus is a design driven space, which stimulates learning and interaction. Apart from tech enabled learning spaces and facilities, the campus provides the infrastructure for sporting, cultural and other leisure activities. The campus facilitates enriching students’ academic and non-academic life at Krea.
From the academic blocks to contemporary accommodation, student lounges to sports facilities, open air theatre to learning labs, library, dining spaces, support centres and more, the ethos of the physical campus has been seamlessly captured into the virtual experience.
This is not the first time that Krea students have come together to keep the Krea experience intact beyond the physical realm. In May this year, they created Kreakast- – an open immersive platform, where activities, forums, discussions and events continued, sustaining the Krea ambience and unique student experience.
Media Mention- http://bweducation.businessworld.in/article/Students-Recreate-Krea-University-Campus-Through-A-Virtual-Spectacular/11-08-2020-307526/
Sharon Buteau, Executive Director at LEAD, was part of a panel discussion organised by Arthan Careers. The discussion, revolving around building more inclusive organisations, explored gender dynamics and women’s empowerment in the development sector and the way forward.
Krea University welcomes Dr Ramachandra Guha as Distinguished University Professor.
Dr Guha will teach classes, interact with students, work with colleagues on curricular development, and help build the vision of Krea.
Dr. Ramachandra Guha is a noted historian and biographer based in Bengaluru. He has taught at the universities of Yale and Stanford, held the Arné Naess Chair at the University of Oslo, and served as the Philippe Roman Professor of History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics and as the Satish Dhawan Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Science.
Guha’s books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989), and an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002), which was chosen by The Guardian as one of the ten best books on cricket ever written. India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007) was chosen as a book of the year by the Economist, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out, and Outlook, and as a book of the decade in the Times of India, the Times of London, and The Hindu.
His awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Daily Telegraph/Cricket Society prize, the Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for excellence in social science research, the Ramnath Goenka Prize for excellence in journalism, the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the R. K. Narayan Prize. In 2009, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the Republic of India’s third highest civilian honour. In 2008, and again in 2013, Prospect magazine nominated Guha as one of the world’s most influential intellectuals. In 2014, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in the humanities by Yale University. In 2015, he was awarded the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies. In 2019, he was made a Honorary Foreign Member of the American Historical Association, only the third Indian to be given that honour.
We are glad to announce that Prof K S Viswanathan, Prof Vivek Bhandari, Prof Gaurav S Ghosh, Prof Pritha Chakrabarti, Prof Sushant Kumar Raut, Prof Amrita Narayanan, Prof Vaishali Sharma, Prof Joya John, Prof Abuthair, Prof Ovee Thorat, Prof Sayantan Datta and Prof Neha Mishra have joined Krea University.
Prof K. S. Viswanathan has joined as Visiting Professor of Chemistry, SIAS.
Viswanathan’s research interests have spanned the areas of molecular conformations and weak non-covalent interactions, particularly the hydrogen bonding interactions, which pervades through all of chemistry, physics and biology. Matrix isolation spectroscopy, a method where isolated molecules are trapped in a cryogenic solid inert gas matrix, was the experimental technique used for these studies. The trapped molecules were then probed using infrared spectroscopy. The experimental results were corroborated using ab initio quantum chemical computations. These studies resulted in a detailed understanding of the structure and energetics of hydrogen bonded complexes. Recent studies of his group on conformations of amino acids, an important class of biomolecules, revealed a very interesting and restrictive structural preference that these molecules adopt, with respect to their backbone, comprising of the COOH and NH2 moieties. In addition, his research group has also been interested in lanthanide fluorescence, specifically to develop methods for the enhancement of fluorescence in an attempt to develop sensitive analytical methods. Enhancement of fluorescence by a factor of over 10,000 was achieved by choosing appropriate ligands as energy transfer agents. He has also been interested in the use of mass spectroscopy for analytical applications.
Prof Vivek Bhandari joins as Visiting Professor of History, SIAS.
Vivek Bhandari is a historian with a particular interest in issues of culture and power as these are manifest in the historical evolution of participatory politics, public culture, and democratic institutions. After a decade as a faculty member at Hampshire College (where he also taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Mt. Holyoke College), Vivek served as Director, and Professor of Social Science at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). In his role as director of IRMA, he worked closely with the cooperative sector, and in 2008-9 co-authored India’s first comprehensive analysis of Panchayati Raj institutions while also researching Maoist movements and contentious issues of land acquisition, and more generally, sustainable development. For the past decade, Vivek has taught at the National Institute of Design (NID), and the Young India Fellowship Program (associated with Ashoka University). He has a particular interest in financial technology and rural livelihoods, and since 2017, has served as chairman and independent director of the Jio Payments Bank, a joint venture of the State Bank of India and Reliance Jio. Vivek is an alumnus of St. Stephen’s College, and the University of Pennsylvania from where he received an M.A. in South Asian Studies and Ph.D. in history.
Prof Gaurav S. Ghosh joins as Visiting Associate Professor of Economics, SIAS.
Gaurav is an economist with research, policy development, and private sector consulting experience. Along with his current association with Krea, he is a senior economist at EY, the consulting firm. Before joining EY, he spent two years as a post-doctoral researcher at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He has a PhD from Pennsylvania State University, an M.A. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a B.A. from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. In recent engagements at EY, Gaurav has consulted with central government ministries on the impact of taxes (like the GST) on investment incentives in the Indian economy. He has also set up a behavioral economics practice and consults widely on the transfer pricing of financial transactions within MNCs. In previous projects, he has delved into antitrust, the valuation of intellectual property, and understanding the complexities of asset-backed securitizations. Energy and the environment have been constant themes in Gaurav’s non-consulting research. He has investigated diverse topics in this area using surveys, experiments, concepts from behavioral economics, and a variety of econometric methods. One strand of research investigated consumer demand for energy and energy-related products. Here, Gaurav and collaborators investigated the divergence between stated and revealed preferences for energy-saving products, and designed and tested nudges that would lead to higher adoption of environmentally friendly technologies. Other research has focused on the design and testing of emissions trading markets, and the valuation of air pollution using hedonic methods.
Prof Pritha Chakrabarti joins as Faculty Associate, SIAS.
Pritha has received her doctoral degree in Cultural Studies from The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. She has been an editor, journalist and written for advertisement and branding before coming into academics. Her area of research interest encompasses film studies, dance studies and performing arts, screendance studies, new media and questions of gender, labour, ideology, class and caste. She has previously worked at the media department of Symbiosis International (deemed university) where she taught several subjects in Writing, Films, Journalism, New Media and Advertising. Pritha has also published in several peer reviewed journals and has worked at the Media Lab, Jadavpur University as a film archivist. She has been the recipient of the Pad.Ma Film Research Fellowship, the CSDS-ICSSR doctoral fellowship and the NFAI film research fellowship. Her current research project tracks the changing body image of the dancing bodies on screen in Hindi cinema and its relation to the neoliberal ideology.
Prof. Sushant Kumar Raut has joined as Assistant Professor of Physics, Department of Sciences.
He is a particle physicist, specializing in the phenomenology of neutrinos. After completing his Ph.D. from I.I.T. Bombay, he has held post-doctoral positions at Physical Research Laboratory (Ahmedabad), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm), Institute for Basic Science (Daejeon), and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Daejeon). Sushant believes that science education can help in solving many of the problems in society, not merely through technological advances, but also through the inculcation of scientific temper and rational thinking. Therefore, he has been keenly interested in education and scientific outreach. Apart from regular university courses, he has taught at summer schools and has been a co-organizer of the `Science on Tap’ series of popular science talks in Daejeon. He is interested in starting and promoting other science vulgarization programmes too.
Prof. Vaishali Sharma joins as Visiting Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, SIAS.
Vaishali Sharma has a Ph.D. in Structural Biology from Centre for Magnetic Resonance, University of Florence, Italy, which is one of the largest biophysics laboratories in Europe. Her studies were focused on proteins that are involved in iron metabolism and assimilation in humans. She studied the interaction of these macromolecules with deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and their consequential molecular cascading events. Vaishali worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the laboratory of Cellular dynamics, Max Plank Institute of Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany and studied the alpha synuclein (ASN) protein, whose accumulation leads to neurodegeneration leading to Parkinson’s disease in humans. This group is a leader in making novel microscopes for studying complicated biological phenomena live. Her research was focused on the interactions of ASN with multiple neuronal proteins involved in cellular trafficking. The molecular events governing packaging and transporting of cellular cargo in and out of cell in rat model system. During her second post-doctoral research at University of Medicine, Gottingen in the Dept of Neurodegeneration, she was part of team involved in testing of proposed potential compounds and their interaction with ASN within cells. Her interdisciplinary research exposure gathered her expertise in cutting edge microscopy, biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology and neurobiology.
Prof. Amrita Narayanan joins as Visiting Professor of Practice in Psychology, SIAS.
Dr Amrita Narayanan is a practicing clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst with an interest in literature and literary theory. She is the editor of The Parrots of Desire: 3000 years of Erotica in India (Aleph Books, 2018) a collection of poems, short prose and fiction in translation from Indian languages, linked by an introductory essay on the central themes in Indian erotic literature. She is a contributor to the volume Psychoanalysis in the Indian Terroir: Emerging Themes in Culture, Family and Childhood (Lexington Books, 2018). She is co-author on the forthcoming Pha(bu)llus: a cultural history of the Phallus (Harper Collins, 2020) in which her essay explores the psychological meanings behind the popularity of the phallus as a symbol. Amrita has taught as visiting faculty at Ashoka University in the English department and at Ambedkar University in the psychology department. Amrita’s research interests are in cultural factors in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, the psychodynamics of women’s sexual agency, and in how cultural factors shape the aesthetics of women’s sexual agency in India. Her writing has appeared in academic journals such as Psychodynamic Practice and Psychoanalytic Review; newspapers such as The Hindu and The Indian Express; and popular press periodicals such as Outlook, Open Magazine, and India Today. Her recent awards include the Taylor and Francis Prize for psychoanalytic writing, the Sudhir Kakar Prize for psychoanalytic writing, and the Homi Bhabha Fellowship.
Prof Abuthahir joins as Krea Postdoctoral Fellow.
Abuthahir earned a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Anna University. After his undergraduate degree, he worked as a software engineer at Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) for five years. He then joined IIT Madras, where he completed his Masters of Science, by research, and then a PhD in the area of communication networks, from the Department of Electrical Engineering. His modelling research interests are centered around the design and performance evaluation of congestion control mechanisms for large scale communication networks like the Internet. His research interests in applied mathematics include control theory, bifurcation theory, queuing systems with delayed feedback, and non-linear time-delay dynamical systems.
Prof Ovee Thorat joins as Krea Postdoctoral Fellow.
Dr Ovee Thorat comes with a mixture of disciplinary backgrounds as she has moved from her training in core natural science subjects to incorporating more of social science in her work. The focus on interdisciplinary at ATREE, Bangalore, where she did her PhD from and trained her in making this shift. Her areas of interest are pastoralism, rangeland ecology, politics of wildlife conservation, and qualitative research methods. For her doctorate in conservation science and sustainability studies, she worked on the political ecology of grassland conservation and pastoral development in the Banni grasslands of Kachchh in India.She is also a co-author of the bilingual book Grasses of Banni which is the first of its kind field guide on this less-known plant group.
Prof Joya John joins as Assistant Professor of Literature, SIAS.
Joya John has earned a Ph.D., from the University of Chicago. She is passionate about how literary and cultural studies can respond to new challenges in the Indian subcontinent and more globally. Her research has so far focused on issues of environment and ecology in Indian fiction. She is interested in issues of energy, mining, waste, as well as the changing landscape of activism around environmental issues and climate change. She believes that literature can bring valuable insights to environmental issues that are often dominated by scientific and policy approaches. She holds both master’s and MPhil degrees in English Literary Studies from Delhi University. She is currently working on academic articles on issues of energy security and access in Hindi fiction and the depiction of Adivasi communities and the environment in contemporary novels set in Jharkhand. She has presented her work at the Association for Asian Studies, European Conference of South Asian Studies, the Annual South Asia Conference at Madison, and the American Comparative Literature Association. She has published on issues of sexual harassment at the workplace, Dalit drama, and autoethnography in contemporary Dalit thought.
Joya has over six years teaching experience at Delhi University where she taught courses on Indian writing in translation, Realism and the Novel, and European drama. During graduate school in the U.S. she has taught academic and professional writing and courses on environmental issues and globalization in South Asia. When not teaching or researching, she is interested in stand-up comedy and believes irony, satire and comedy have tremendous critical power in contemporary India. She is interested in developing audio content and believes podcasts are the future.
Prof Sayantan Datta joins as Faculty Associate, SIAS.
Prof Sayantan Datta a developmental neurobiologist in training, working towards Ph.D. at TIFR-Hyderabad. He did B.Sc. in Life Sciences from Presidency University, Kolkata, and M.Sc. in Neural and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Hyderabad. He is an experienced science writer and communicator. His interests lie in the fields of feminist science writing, cognitive models of writing, science illustration, and multimedia communication also interested in the history and philosophy of sciences, and neurodevelopment. Currently, he is looking at intersections between neuroscience and law, and neurofeminist philosophy. At Krea, He wish to use skills from the intersection of the sciences and social sciences, and his experience in writing, to work with students to develop their academic writing and communication skills. He is open to collaboration with other researchers and teachers interested in the aforementioned disciplines/subjects.
Prof. Neha Mishra joins as Visiting faculty, SIAS.
Neha Mishra has an MPhil in English Literature from the University of Delhi. Her MPhil dissertation examined the hues of systemic and cultural impunity embedded in acts of violence against women in the Indian nation-state. Neha completed her MA in English Literature from Shiv Nadar University where she also worked as teaching assistant for Academic Writing and Creative Writing courses. She has also worked as Assistant Editor in the Global Editions division of Pearson Education.
Krea University has inked a significant partnership with Kauvery Hospital, a reputed name in healthcare, to operate and maintain a health centre and pharmacy at Krea University campus in Sri City. The partnership also brings with it a bouquet of specialised health services, in line with the University’s focus on providing high quality support for the health and wellbeing of Krea students, faculty and staff.
Krea University was set up with an aim to re-imagine education for the 21st century. The 40-acre campus stands about 60 kilometres north of Chennai in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh and is replete with state-of-the-art facilities, with special emphasis on the physical and mental health requirements of the students, faculty and staff.
“Krea University is proud to ink collaboration with Kauvery Hospital to provide 24 x 7 healthcare services for our Sri City campus to serve the needs of all our community members. Kauvery Hospital is a trusted and leading 1300 bed multispeciality hospital and well known in the healthcare sector for its ethical practices. Through this partnership we look forward to providing continuous and quality medical support to all Krea students and staff”, said Group Capt. Puthan Ramesh – Chief Administrative Officer of Krea University Campus.
The Krea campus health centre, managed by Kauvery Hospital will have a dedicated general practitioner and occupational health nurses on duty, with the doctor available over call 24×7, ensuring that all medical requests and emergencies are swiftly dealt with. The health centre will also have a BLS ambulance with round the clock service availability and routine first aid facilities. The onsite pharmacy will cater to the needs of the campus residents with well stocked inventory. Apart from dedicated case basis support and follow ups, there will also be routine check-ups and health promotion activities. From time to time, healthcare specialists will also be arranged to make campus visits.
The partnership also brings forth holistic healthcare management which could include Continuous Medical Education on a monthly basis, rendering professional advice to the campus administration in safety and hygiene practices- from maintenance of buildings, kitchen area, food and water testing to student dietary chart. Advise on COVID management protocols will also be contributed. The students and members of the staff at Krea shall be entitled to avail treatment for any diseases at any of the Kauvery Hospitals in Tamil Nadu including treatment for COVID-19.
Kauvery will also join forces with Krea University through the extension of its community campaigns.
COVID-19 has exposed the glaring holes in India’s social welfare delivery system. LEAD’s Raka De and Anjani Balu pen down this piece on the deficiencies in the current architecture and suggest how the pandemic may prove to be an impetus for strengthening last-mile delivery of welfare benefits and services in India.
Krea welcomes Dr Nayantara Ramamoorthy, the awardee of the inaugural Krea Faculty Fellowship 2020 and Saloni Atal, our Visiting Research Fellow. Their strong expertise in Psychology ably propels the research vision at Krea. Krea Faculty Fellowship and Visiting Research Fellowship are set up with an aim to strengthen the research mandate at Krea.
Dr Nayantara Ramamoorthy, did her PhD in Psychology at the University of Cambridge with a research focus on attentional mechanisms in gaze perception — the underlying mechanisms that guide individuals to attentionally prioritise one gaze type (e.g., direct gaze) over the other (e.g., averted gaze) when viewing another’s gaze. She has a Masters in Developmental Psychology from Maastricht University, The Netherlands and a Bachelors in Psychology from the University of Delhi. She has also worked as a special educator at the Centre for Child Development and Disabilities, Bangalore, where she designed and implemented intervention plans for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and trained parents to be active participants in the intervention process. Nayantara’s broader research interests lie in social perception and cognition, particularly with a view to understanding underlying pathways in neuro-atypical gaze perception.
Saloni Atal, MPhil, is a PhD student and a Gates scholar at the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge. Saloni is a social psychologist and works on global mental health, gender, labor and social development. Through her research, she aims to provide policy-relevant evidence that drives change on the ground. She is particularly interested in the socio-political economy of mental health and in developing contextually sensitive tools to measure women’s agency and empowerment. She uses mixed research methods and takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on sociocultural theories of knowledge, critical development studies and transnational feminist perspectives.
