From the Director

The Spring semester has started with several SASNET-related events and more to come. I would like to start by thanking Ted Svensson for stepping in as interim SASNET Director during the Fall of 2025. Ted did a fantastic job in my absence. I would also like to thank Matilda Skoglöw, our former communication officer, for her time at SASNET and extend a warm welcome to Frida Lilja, our new SASNET communication officer. Thanks also to our outgoing SASNET-coordinator, Marie Stissing Jensen who has worked with us for the last two years and done a terrific job.

During the Fall of 2025, we signed a cooperation agreement with Sydasien, a booklet publication dedicated to South Asia in Swedish. The agreement will facilitate joint seminars, joint web pages, links to important events and closer cooperation for bringing together researchers, journalists, writers and others working on South Asia related topics in Sweden and South Asia. We also continue our close cooperation with UPF, the student-led Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University, as well as with the School of Journalism, libraries and NGOs in the region to further advance outreach into the larger community on social, economic and political events in relation to South Asia.

In January, Tushar Joshi, a doctoral student from the University of Melbourne gave a SASNET-lecture on Strategic Culture and Foreign Policy Behaviour: The BJP and RSS Influence on India’s Foreign Policy Towards China (2014–2024)’. We also organized the first of two SASNET project workshops on ‘Dismantling and Defending Democracy: Insecurity, emotions and autocratization in Europe, the US and South Asia’ with the aim to submit a major funding application in August. In February we were joined by Associate Professor Karen Valentin and her research team from Aarhus University, who gave fascinating talks on 'Moral Economies of Schooling: Money, Morality and Household Financing of Education’.
 
A new important initiative is our SASNET-seminar series on ‘anti-caste thinking as political theory’, with speakers from all around the world. The series is convened by Rajat Roy (Presidency University) and Ted Svensson (Lund University). Other upcoming events are a major workshop on ‘Authoritarianism and Democratic Resurgence in South Asia’ in April; a panel debate in May to mark the World Press Freedom Day for a discussion on Media, Power, and Technology in South Asia with several South Asian journalists; and a talk by Associate Professor Glynn Williams (Lund University) on ‘Negotiating Lockdown: Collective life and the control of Covid-19 in India’s low-income urban neighbourhoods’.

SASNET has also recently announced two calls for travel grants for doctoral students and journalism students as well as grants for writing funding applications. Please look at our home page for more information on these grants. There will be further calls announced during the late Spring for research and planning grants, so keep an eye out for these announcements.

I wish you all the best for the months to come and hope to see many of you at our own and co-organized events.

Catarina Kinnvall

Director of SASNET