Dear Friends,
Welcome back to Berkeley and wish you all a very happy new year!
In Spring 2017, the Subir & Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies completed its third anniversary. To mark the occasion, the Center published a report detailing the achievements of the past three years. Please click here or on the box to the right to read this
publication.
We are delighted to announce that the Chowdhury Center has a brand new website. Please look at it
here.
Events
This semester at the Center is full of lectures, films, and workshops, and we hope you will join us. A quick round up of the events lined up for this semester are:
- Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Rohingya Crisis Panel | Implications for Health and Human Rights
12-1 p.m. | Li Ka Shing Center, 545 (Please arrive by 12:10pm @ 2nd floor elevators)
Speakers: Dr. Rohini Haar; Dr. Nazneen Uddin
- Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Higher Education in the Private Sector in South Asia: Trends and Challenges
12-1:30 p.m. | 10 Stephens Hall
Speaker: Atiqul Islam, Vice Chancellor, North South University, Bangladesh.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Documenting the Undocumented: Bengali Muslim Migrants In and Beyond 20th Century U.S. Archives
5-7 p.m. | 10 Stephens Hall
Speaker: Vivek Bald, scholar, writer, documentary filmmaker and Associate Professor of Writing and Digital Media at MIT
- Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Talk by Naomi Hossain: Title TBD
5-7 p.m. | 10 Stephens Hall
Speaker: Naomi Hossain, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
All our events are video recorded and made available on our website. Please scroll to the bottom of the sidebar on the right to see a list of all the newly added videos.
Student Funding
The Chowdhury Center provides three scholarships to Berkeley students for conducting research to improve the lives of those in Bangladesh. In 2017,
Samira Siddique (MS Candidate, Energy & Resource Group) was awarded the Subir Chowdhury Fellowship on Quality of Life in Bangladesh;
Kashfia Nehrin (Master of Development Practice Candidate) won the Malini Chowdhury Fellowship on Bangladesh Studies; and
Abhishek Dalal (BA, Public Health, South Asian Studies, Class of 2018) received the Subir Chowdhury Undergraduate Scholarship.
The 2016 recipient of the Subir Chowdhury Fellowship on Quality of Life in Bangladesh,
Sayah Bogor, graduated with a master's in public health last summer. Sayah, a refugee from Somalia, spoke about her incredibly hard and arduous journey from Somalia to Berkeley, and said that being at Berkeley and having the support of the Chowdhury Fellowship allowed her to achieve her academic dreams. Sayah's journey and her story of survival can be read
here.
Collaborations
As part of the Center's focus on creating opportunities for collaborative research between UC Berkeley and universities in Bangladesh, we are delighted to share news of two new partnerships. The first, with the
Center for Business and Human Rights at the NYU Stern School of Business, is a collaborative research project focusing on
Shonman (or respect), a new platform developed by the Bangladeshi Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) to undertake efforts similar to what the Accord and Alliance had been doing in the country, i.e. the inspection and remediation of garment factories. The main objective of this research is to understand the structure of this new platform, its main objectives, and the strategies by which the tasks of
Shonman will be carried out. The final product will be the publication of a research brief highlighting the findings.
Kashfia Nehrin, MDP candidate and the 2017 recipient of the Malini Chowdhury Fellowship on Bangladesh Studies, carried out the preliminary research during the summer.
The second newly formed collaboration with
The South Asia Centre at the London School of Economics (LSE), is aimed at jointly establishing an international conference series with a core focus on Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Summit, the first of its kind, will focus on the major issues that confront Bangladesh as it moves forward and what other solutions that may be available and possible. Panelists will discuss the rights of minorities, ethnic groups and the wider society within which they are located, and hear the views of individuals from different contexts – academics, researchers, activists, grassroots workers, media personnel, and others. Our purpose is to understand these significant issues confronting the nation from multiple perspectives, and identify ways forward to address them in contemporary times. Each panel discussion will produce a Working Paper which will be available free to download from our websites. The Summit will be held at LSE in June 2018. Please check our website for further details on the agenda and speakers.
As for our ongoing partnerships, we continue to offer remote internship opportunities with the
Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST) for select UC Berkeley students to assist with the organization's human rights and law and justice related research work. A requirement of the internship is the submission of an article on the internship experience. The articles submitted by the 2017 Chowdhury Interns, Prathyush Parasuraman and Spandana Singh, may be read by clicking the links below.
The Center is currently taking applications for two positions for this summer. Please click
here (or on the box in the sidebar) to apply. The deadline for submission is March 15.
Our faculty exchange program between the
Chowdhury Center and
Bioengineering at UC Berkeley and the
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) has arrived at a major milestone. This exchange program is designed to bring BUET faculty specializing in Bioengineering to UC Berkeley for a period of one to two months. During this time, they will have the opportunity to engage with the educational and research opportunities in the Bioengineering Department and allow for potential research collaborations to develop.
Our first exchange faculty,
Nafisa Islam, Assistant Professor at the Chemical Engineering Department (ChE) at BUET visited UC Berkeley in Fall 2017 and
worked in the Berkeley Micro-Fluid Dynamics Laboratory under
Professor Dorian Liepmann. Professor Islam's visit, which was primarily carried out to explore the possibilities of a long-term collaborative research and exchange between the two educational institutions, culminated in the launch of a new research project on understanding the mechanism of platelet activation and adhesion on different surfaces using micro-fluidic devices. Led by Prof. Islam and Dr. Liepmann, students from both schools will contribute to the research and carry out project-related tasks. The final goal is to submit a manuscript for publication in a peer reviewed scientific journal.
After the great success of the
2016 workshop, we are thrilled to once again partner with the
American Institute of Bangladesh Studies and the
Council of American Overseas Research Centers to host the second
Faculty Workshop on Research Writing & Publishing, a week long workshop at UC Berkeley for faculty at universities in Bangladesh in Spring 2018. This program will bring six faculty members from Bangladeshi institutions of higher education to be in residence for one week at the Chowdhury Center, where they will take part in workshops on research methodologies, writing, and the publishing process led by UC Berkeley faculty. After the week in residence at Berkeley, Bangladeshi faculty will present their papers in progress in a day long workshop. Each junior faculty member will be paired up with a US based faculty member in his/ her field who will provide feedback on the paper presented. The final product will be an academic paper that can be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication. In addition, junior faculty will have the opportunity to make contacts and network with US based faculty and researchers. The last such workshop was held in 2016, the details of which may be viewed
here. The Center asked the visiting faculty to reflect on their time spent in UC Berkeley; these reflections may be viewed by scrolling to the bottom of the page.
Media
Congratulations to Subir Chowdhury for the establishment of the
Subir Chowdhury School of Quality and Reliability at IIT-Kharagpur. In 2017 Subir was also listed as one of
The Thinkers50 and his
podcast on The Difference was ranked #1 in 2017, by America Trends,
Director, Sanchita Saxena spoke about worker safety in the garment industry in Bangladesh in a podcast titled,
On Labor & Worker Safety. Led by journalist Salil Tripathi, the podcast was part of a mini-series dedicated to the theme of “Realising Access to Effective Remedy”, as part of the Institute for Human Rights and Business' annual
Top 10 Business & Human Rights issues for 2018.
Past Events
For those of you who were not able to attend our 2017 events, please visit the
Videos section on our website to view recordings of past programs. Newly added events since our last eNewsletter may be viewed in the sidebar on the right
We look forward to seeing you at one of our events this semester!
