Dr Sayandeb Chowdhury, Senior Assistant Professor, Literature, SIAS delivered the online public lecture ‘Uttam Kumar’s Last Laugh, Or a Talk Full of Ifs and Buts’, on the occasion of the centenary of the Bengali screen icon, organised by Manikchak College, Gour Banga University, Bengal.
Dr Swarnamalya Ganesh Associate Professor of Practice, Literature and Global Arts, SIAS was part of a session titled “Women and India-Pakistan Conflict”, organised by Noor e Emaan. The session reflected on recent and past conflicts between India and Pakistan through a feminist lens centering women, gender and marginalised groups.
An article titled Simpler, not fairer: Why GST 2.0 misses the point, by Dr Jyoti Kumari, Assistant Professor, Finance, Accounting and Quantitative Finance, IFMR GSB, has been published in Deccan Herald.
Dr Sayandeb Chowdhury, Senior Assistant Professor, Literature, SIAS, delivered a talk in Kolkata on 22 August at the invitation of DAG (formerly Delhi Art Gallery). The talk, on the idea of singularity in image tropes, was occasioned by the DAG exhibition Light and Shadow: Satyajit Ray Through Nemai Ghosh’s Lens and was titled ‘An Eye for an Eye, or Watching Ray Seeing’.
Kaveri Bharath, Visiting Professor, Global Arts, SIAS is showcasing a solo show, Fifty-50, which opened on the evening of 8 August, 2025, at Espace 24 (the gallery of the Alliance Francaise of Madras). After a very warm welcome by the Director of the Alliance, and a small cake cutting to commemorate the artist’s birthday, the doors were opened by the artist’s close family. Krea faculty members, Dr Akhila Ramnarayan, Dr Gowhar Fazili, Dr Annu Jalais, Prajwal Parajuly, and Sara Abraham attended the opening too.
The show has a collection of ceramics ranging from sculptural installations to functional cups and plates, as well as some mini ceramic vases framed by quilted textile panels, also made by Kaveri. There are also watercolour paintings and pencil sketches on display. A set of shelves with 50 ceramic drinking forms on it, is titled “50 Cups”, and beside it is a wall full of pencil and charcoal drawings of 5 faces, titled collectively as “50 Mugs”!
The exhibition also has a corner with colours, pencils, and paper set up on an easel and another sheet of paper that scrolls down the wall, where the visitors and viewers are invited to leave their mark, by adding a squiggle or drawing.
The exhibition features works from her own studio as well as from ones she’s made at other studios, over the years. The oldest piece in the show being a vase from 1999, and the more recent pieces being from her time in Japan in April-May 2025. There are even pieces that she made/painted as recently as July 2025!
Kaveri herself will be at the gallery on the 14, 17, and the 22 of August, if you would like to see it and get a personal guided tour of the exhibition. The gallery is at the Alliance Francaise on College Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai. The timings are 10.30 am to 6.30 pm, including Sundays. However it will be closed on Independence Day and Krishna Jayanti, (15 and 16.Aug). The last day to be able to catch the show is 22 of August.
Artist’s Statement:
The main impetus to have this show was my 50th birthday. Fifty seemed like a significant milestone and cause to celebrate. Every aspect of this show – the venue, the ceramics, quilted panels, sketches, and the paintings – is significant to my life and work.
Inspired by my grandfather’s sculpting, I always played in mud and clay as a kid. Reconnecting to clay in my adult life, at Golden Bridge Pottery, Pondicherry, I learnt the ways of clay from Ray and Debby. Their generosity and ways of seeing have given me a lifelong love for ceramics and teaching too! These last 30+ years of making, teaching, and thinking through clay are represented in the ceramics on display here.
I managed to find my way to a life in art and then eventually in clay, while spending almost every day in the early 1990s at the Alliance Francaise de Madras, learning French and working on plays with Magic Lantern. This makes this venue all the more special to have this milestone celebration in.
When I was restricted from working in my studio due to health concerns after a miscarriage, I learnt to quilt with my grandmother and channeled into the fabric, my creative urge to make. As a “thank you” nod to that phase and learning, I have included a few quilted frames here.Although I more or less stopped sketching since I took up clay, the pandemic lockdowns re-kindled my urge to use pencil and paper again. I found a patient guide in the Chennai theatre and watercolour artist, Dhanushkodi. With his encouragement and guidance over Skype, I even ventured into watercolours, a medium that I had always feared. The pencil drawings and watercolour paintings here are from that period and after.
Although this is supposed to be a “solo” show, no one can truly make it alone. I am because you are. And so, there is the interactive corner, where you get to leave your mark on this show, too. Interact with the marks left by others and leave a mark of your own.
All of this put together is 50-Fifty!
50-50 of ceramics and other media
50-50 of old work and new
50-50 of the future and of nostalgia
50-50 of me and of you.
Dr Preeti Sampat, Associate Professor, Sociology & Social Anthropology, SIAS was invited to deliver a session entitled ‘Compassionate Access to Land and it’s Affordances’ at a hybrid fellowship course “Compassionate Spaces”, developed by the Institute of Palliative Medicine, Calicut, Kerala and the Kerala chapter of the Indian Institute of Architects. The fellowship is an attempt to explore inner and outer spaces, and how to make them compassionate. Dr Sampat’s session discussed land and its more than human affordances through their historically particular material and social relationalities.
Dr Praveen Bhagawan, Associate Professor, Finance, Accounting and Quantitative Finance, IFMR GSB presented multiple papers in various institutions at Hyderabad.
Dr Bhagawan presented one of his papers (co-authored with my faculty colleague Jyoti Prasad Mukhopadhyay and Navya J Muricken, a faculty member at ICFAI Business School, Bangalore) titled ‘Does Female Presence on Corporate Boards matter for Firm`s Cost of Equity? Evidence from Indian Firms’ at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.
He also presented another of his papers (co-authored with my Dr Jyoti Prasad Mukhopadhyay, Associate Professor, Economics, IFMR GSB and Soumyabrata Basu, PhD scholar, IFMR GSB) titled ‘Creditor Rights and Firm`s Cost of Debt: Empirical Evidence from Indian Firms’ at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus.
The third paper presented by him ( co-authored with my Dr Jyoti Prasad Mukhopadhyay, Associate Professor, Economics, IFMR GSB and Soumyabrata Basu, PhD scholar, IFMR GSB ) titled ‘Creditor Rights and Tax Avoidance: Empirical Evidence from Quasi-natural Experiment in India’ was at University of Hyderabad.
Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice, Krea-CWP has authored an article titled A random number generator using quantum physics and a blockchain published by The Hindu. While a new study isn’t the first to describe how quantum phenomena can be used in the service of generating random numbers, the technique incorporates a cryptographic tool called blockchains in their protocol. This makes the technique fully traceable and certifiable by independent parties, making it the first of its kind.
Sathyanarayanan Ramachandran, Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor, Marketing, IFMR GSB, was invited as an expert speaker to address the National Conference on emerging trends in AI and reverse logistics organised by the University of Madras in collaboration with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) on 5 August, 2025.
Sathyanarayanan Ramachandran shared his practical insights on the marketing and sustainability perspective, the short and long-term impact of reverse logistics management on net promoter score and customer lifetime value and the artificial intelligence trends in the industry with several success case studies from Amazon, H&M and Apple during the panel discussion on reverse logistics. The session was well received with several sets of questions and requests for elaboration.
Dr Arindam Chatterjee, Postdoctoral Fellow in Biological Sciences, SIAS has been elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London (FLS) as of 2 July 2025.
The Linnean Society was founded in 1788, and is the oldest learned society devoted to the science of natural history.
