Indo-French social sciences programme held at PU

The 5-day event dealt with various topics concerning labour and development

Sharing knowledge: Pondicherry University Vice-Chancellor Prof. Gurmeet Singh and French Consul General Catherine Suard at the launch of the Social Sciences Winter School.

The recently-concluded fourth edition of the Social Sciences Winter School, an exercise in Indo-French academic collaboration held at the Pondicherry University, discussed a gamut of issues relating to societal challenges at the intersection of labour and development.

The five-day training programme was co-hosted by the Pondicherry University Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, School of Social Sciences and International Studies and the French Institute of Pondicherry. Prof. Gurmeet Singh, Vice-Chancellor of Pondicherry University, and Catherine Suard, the French Consul General in Puducherry opened the winter school.

Wide coverage

Prof. Venkata Raghotham, Dean, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, Pondicherry University and Prof. Frédéric Landy, Director of the French Institute of Pondicherry outlined the objectives of the Winter School which deliberated on issues ranging across the transformation of labour, emerging labour sectors, labour laws, structural transformation and the place of gender.

Among those who delivered the plenary lectures were Prof. Geert De Neve (Anthropologist, University of Sussex), Dr. Karuna Dietrich Wielenga (Historian, University of Oxford), Prof. Vijaybaskar (Economist, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai) and Prof. Binitha Thampi (Development Studies, IIT, Chennai), a University press note said.

Multi-year programme

The Social Sciences Winter School is a multi-year programme of intensive and multidisciplinary training workshops addressing theoretical and methodological issues in social sciences research. The school has several objectives such as creating a highly efficient tool in research capacity building, setting up an academic network of researchers in India and France interested in South Asia, in consolidating a community of young scholars in India.

By convention, the Winter School comprised a day of plenary sessions, three thematic methodological workshops running in parallel throughout the week and a final day of project restitution and delivery of certificates.

Nearly 50 Indian students (mainly Ph.D. candidates) from all over the country were selected to join this intensive programme supervised by a multidisciplinary team of international trainers.

The winter school was coordinated by a group of faculty-researchers of the Indo-French partnership — Dr. Thanuja M. , Dr. Anne Cassile , Dr. Christoph Jalil Nordman and Dr. Remy Delage.