Change and continuity in South Asia: Unpacking identity, security and technology

Join Kriti Kapila and Rohan Mukherjee for the keynote address, opening the 2022 King's India Institute Graduate Conference.

2022 conference theme

Change, whether of political, social, or economic nature, stands out as a contemporary theme arousing scholarly interest across disciplines. Transformative change can occur at all levels of analysis and maintains relevance to students of ideas, interests as well as institutions. A focused perspective on technology and the interplay with identity and security matters offers a trenchant lens to understand the recent developments in the South Asian region.

Security constitutes a cross-cutting theme which allows us to evaluate the changing efforts of protecting human individuals, national interests, and capabilities as well as the world climate, thereby provoking us to think more critically about which kind of change is desirable. The emergence of new technologies in South Asia has stipulated novel questions pertaining e.g. to the gig economy, the nature and substance of discourses, and the governance of the internet.

About the speakers

Dr Kriti Kapila, Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Law, King's College London
Dr Kriti Kapila is a social anthropologist whose research focuses on the work of law in contemporary India, including in the anthropology of law, genetics and genomics. She is the Academic Director for the International School for Government and has extensive experience in running cutting-edge professional development and executive education programmes.

Rohan Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale-NUS College
Rohan Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. From September 2022, he will be an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His book, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions is forthcoming in the Cambridge Studies in International Relations series at Cambridge University Press. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at Princeton University and a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford.

Opening remarks: Professor Louise Tillin.

About the King's India Institute Graduate Conference

Each year, students from the King's India Institute organise a graduate conference, which is attended by 35+ universities around the world and offer the opportunity to explore the current challenges facing South Asia.

This year's Graduate Conference is hosted in partnership with the South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore and consists of 12 panel sessions across three days (21-23 June 2022), as well as one workshop and two public events.