The King's India Institute Graduate Conference (KIIGC) 2023 is taking place on 17 and 18 May, and is on the theme Identity, Culture, Strategy: Imaginaries and Representations in and of South Asia.

The conference will be held fully in-person at King's for graduate students registered in universities in the UK or any country outside South Asia. Graduate students registered fully or in part in a university in South Asia may participate online. Countries eligible are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. 

About the theme 

With the collapse of empires and the dawn of the Cold War, South-Asia became a vital node in the transnational exchange of ideas and a fascinating theatre of progressive struggles for radical social change in the twentieth century, acquiring strategic importance in the contested landscape of modernity. In the present day, it is home not only to ambitious emerging market economies but also to countries witnessing ethnic majoritarianism and conscious centralising tendencies vis a vis regional tension.

South Asia's multifaceted trajectories have contributed consequentially to reconfiguring the balance of power in the international order. In light of the richness of its modern history, the centrality of South Asia to the world-making project in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has garnered increasing scholarly attention in recent years, cutting across disciplinary boundaries.

In the spirit of expanding the frontier of intellectual discourse in the region, this conference aims to explore the complex interplay of identity, culture, and strategy in the imaginaries and representations in and of South Asia. The dialectic between complex colonial subjectivities forged through globalising forces and various modes of decolonisation has led to a concomitant refashioning of identities. This process has been imagined and represented in various ways, finding expression in official reports, popular media and academic discourse.

Global perceptions of the region have evolved as this process has unfolded over the decades. This conference provides an occasion to critically examine the strategies underpinning the aforesaid imaginaries and representations. Embracing a multi-disciplinary approach, the conference seeks to productively engage scholars focusing on South Asia. The new insights and fresh perspectives that will emerge in the course of the conference hold the potential to substantially complicate our collective understanding of the region.

Submitting abstracts

The KIIGC 2023 welcomes abstracts inquiring about South Asia through various disciplines. The call is open to submissions from the humanities, social sciences, geography, economics, environmental studies, and law. We also encourage graduate students with interdisciplinary contributions as standard in digital humanities, geopolitics, public policy, or legal history to submit their abstracts.

Interested graduate students can submit a 300-word abstract and a brief bio (max 150 words) via the following form by 15 April 2023. Only one abstract may be submitted per person. Selected participants will be notified of the acceptance by 22 April 2023. The papers should be submitted by 1 May 2023.

A purposively assembled King's College London selection committee will award the three best papers prizes worth £300, £200, and £100.​

Please note that we are not able to provide any travel or accommodation bursary. Write to us at kiigc2023@gmail.com for further questions on your submission or the conference proceedings.​