Professor Kai Easton, Professor, Literature & Visual Cultures, SIAS has penned a tribute and visual travelogue for South African author, Zoe Wicomb, published in Wasafiri, the international magazine of contemporary writing.
Dr Shiv Issar, Assistant Professor, Sociology and Social Anthropology, SIAS recently co-authored a book chapter titled Labor’s Odyssey Through Algorithmic Systems published in the The Sage Handbook of Digital Labour.
The abstract for the chapter: Algorithmic systems bear testimony to the sweeping transformation of labor in the 21st century. Not only do they mediate the way work is executed but they also increasingly define what constitutes possible work. They stand in direct relation to the ways labor is identified, hired, governed, performed, and evaluated. We provide a coherent framework for the emerging research around digital labor by exploring the use of algorithmic systems across four distinct dimensions of labor: algorithmic hiring, algorithmic regulation, algorithmic content moderation, and algorithmic evaluation of labor.
The latest publication co-authored by Professor Chiranjib Sur, Visiting Professor, Computer Science, SIAS titled Energy-Aware Runtime Resource Harmonizer for Co-running Applications has received the ‘Distinguished paper award’ at the 32nd IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, & Analytics. The work is about developing a scheduler to harmonise the energy usage of any computing workload. The team (in collaboration with IIIT Delhi) have developed :
1. A profiler to measure the energy consumption of any compute workload (programming language agnostics) and
2. Developed a way about how to reduce the carbon footprint by scheduling/distributing the compute load in a shared memory system.
A research paper titled Amino Acids Trapped Inside C₁₀₀: A Computational Study, co-authored by Dr Surajit Kayal, Assistant Professor, Chemistry, SIAS, and Dr Brijesh Kumar Mishra, Associate Professor, Chemistry, SIAS, has recently been published in the scientific journal ChemPhysChem.
Abstract
The feasibility of the C₁₀₀ fullerene as a nanocontainer for glycine, alanine, and serine has been investigated using density functional theory (B3LYP-D3), second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory, and the domain-based local pair natural orbital–coupled cluster singles doubles and perturbative triples (DLPNO-CCSD(T)) method. The interaction energies for glycine@C₁₀₀, alanine@C₁₀₀, and serine@C₁₀₀ are calculated to be −47.8, −45.5, and −43.8 kcal mol−1, respectively, for their most stable conformers at the DLPNO-CCSD(T) level, indicating favourable host–guest interactions. Furthermore, encapsulation leads to substantial stabilisation of both the intramolecular hydrogen-bonded and non-hydrogen-bonded conformers of the amino acids. Vibrational frequency analysis shows a blueshift for most vibrational modes, indicative of restricted motion due to the confined space. However, the OH-stretch mode, especially for the intramolecular hydrogen-bonded conformers, exhibits a large redshift upon encapsulation, suggesting a strengthening of the hydrogen bond due to confinement. Dipole moment calculations reveal a significant reduction after encapsulation, indicating effective screening of the dipole by the C₁₀₀ cage. ¹H NMR chemical shift calculations show a large downfield shift, consistent with deshielding effects experienced by the encapsulated molecules due to the unique electronic environment within the fullerene cavity.
Neha Mishra, Assistant Professor of Practice, Krea-CWP was invited by the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME) to conduct a workshop on ‘Detecting Generative AI-Use in Academic Writing’ on 23 December 2025.
In the face of rising (un)declared generative AI-use in scholarly communities and the absence of reliable tools to detect such use, Neha Mishra was invited to conduct a workshop for its working editors on developing strategies for detecting AI-use. By comparing AI-generated samples with those written by humans in the field of medical ethics, the workshop a) identified genre- and context-agnostic hallmarks of AI-use, such as specific sentence structures, generic, non-specific content, and lack of narrative logic and b) indicated the need for developing similar strategies for identifying context-specific hallmarks of AI-use.
Dr Chirag Dhara, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, SIAS has authored an opinion piece in The Indian Express titled, Here’s how extreme heat is undermining food security and public health across the world.
The piece follows Dr Dhara’s recent co-authored paper A post-AR6 update on observed and projected climate change in India.
Professor Bishnu Mohapatra, Professor, Politics, SIAS and Director – Moturi Satyanarayana Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences delivered a talk titled ‘Reimagining the Humanities: Potential and Possibilities’ at SAU Thought Cafe, hosted by South Asian University.
A chapter authored by Neha Mishra and Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professors of Practice, Krea-CWP, titled Paam Padati, has been published in the book Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes. The book has been published by Tulika Books and Columbia University Press, and has been edited by Sasanka Perera and Renny Thomas.
Brief Note About the Chapter
In this chapter, authors investigate attitudes and practices associated with paam padati — a common greeting among the hijras — through vignettes from online interviews with hijra, transgender and intersex persons. They identify how caste is simultaneously invoked and denied in discursive practices like paam padati. They also document other emerging greetings in hijra collectivities across India (jai shri ram, jai shri mahakaal). In doing so, they identify how contemporary forms of colonialism — like Hindutva/Hindu nationalism — rewrite and redirect the respect borne by gestures of greeting. By analysing their interlocutors’ narratives, they underscore the urgency of decolonial praxis in gender and sexuality studies in India to interrogate (i) the erasure of caste in historicizing cultural practices of gender- and sexually transgressive communities; and (ii) the quest for seeking precolonial roots by invoking one’s belonging to dominant religious collectivities alongside a fractured belonging to the subjugated collectivity. The authors argue that decolonial praxis in gender and sexuality studies includes an analytical lens that combines frameworks of religion, caste and coloniality.
Brief Note About the Book
The volume presents a set of keywords and concepts anchored in the region’s languages and its vast cultural landscape. It reiterates specific attitudes, ways of seeing and methods of doing, embedded in the historical and contemporary experiences in South Asia. The words, concepts, ideas, and attitudes in this volume explore the contexts of their production and how their meanings have changed at different historical moments. Individual essays, from across disciplines, argues for the importance in moving away from the intellectual shackles of colonial and neo-colonial experiences while also not succumbing to the traps of local reductionist nativisms and cultural nationalisms.
Dr Shriddha Shah, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, SIAS, was invited as a panellist for the session ‘In Memory of JPS Uberoi’ at the STS India Network Conference: Co-shaping of Science, Technology, and Society in India, held from 15–17 December 2025 at OP Jindal Global University, Sonepat, NCR, Delhi.
