India's National Folklore Support Centre offers the open conference systems portal as a support facility to scholars and institutions organizing conferences in the field of Indian Folklore and allied disciplines. Institutions and scholars desiring of using this facility needs to write to M.D.Muthukumaraswamy, Director, National Folklore Support Centre, No.508, Fifth Floor, "Kaveri Complex", 96, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai- 600034
Email: muthu@indianfolklore.org
Worlds Religions Congress
'World Religions after September 11: An Asian Perspective.' There has been a growing recognition that cultures of the East aim at a holistic view of the conventional binaries of religious versus secular concerns. The primary view of the conference is to evolve a shared space for a dialogue on the positive role of world's religions for securing peace, harmony and fundamental rights of the citizen. Another area of focus is the crucial contribution that the academic study of religion can make to the ongoing challenge of peace-building and peace-keeping, and in stimulating a civilizational dialogue among Asian and South-East Asian cultures by drawing upon its vast corpus of knowledge, historical as well as phenomenological. Abstracts not longer than 150 words may be submitted with the name, title, theme to which is belongs and type of presentation (AV screen, laptop or laser pointer) clearly specified by September 15, 2008, to worldsreligionsjamia@gmail.com
Land Reform: Access of Poor to Common Property, Forest Resources and Agricultural Land Use
Seva Mandir and the Land Reform Programme under the Ministry of Rural Development
Seva Mandir has created an expert group for leveraging existing body of knowledge on CPRs through collaboration with knowledge centres. The group consists of eminent researchers like Ms Kanchan Chopra from Institute of Economic Growth, Mr M S Rathore from Institute of Development Studies, Ms Amita Shah from Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Shri Sivaramakrishnan from Yale University, Shri Ajay S Mehta, President Seva Mandir, and Neelima Khetan, Chief Executive, Seva Mandir.
We would be very happy to receive inputs from the various sections of civil society in the country and invite readers to write status papers and thematic papers on the issue. Readers who are interested in writing Status papers or Thematic papers might get in touch with us on the following email id with a brief on the topic and area proposed to be covered. Any other question or queries are also welcome.
nrd@sevamandir.org or neelima@sevamandir.org
NFSC Summer School
NFSC Summer School initiative is meant for college and University teachers in the field of humanities and social sciences. NFSC Summer School aims at convening college teachers in a collaborative ambiance to work with audio visual archives, develop online courses, and integrate them in their classroom teaching. NFSC Summer School plans to be an annual event with the participants every year forming themselves in a network of NFSC Fellows to do collaborative work on a regular basis. With this initiative National Folklore Support Centre aims to be a facilitator for collaborative and interdisciplinary academic work in higher education.
For the year 2008 we plan to organize a fifteen days workshop with an inbuilt conference for five days on the theme "Towards a Higher Education of Inclusion, Collaboration, and Community Engagement" Although this year the workshop will not be held during summer, it will lead to the regular annual summer school events. Please view the conference details and register yourself to participate.
FOSSILS conference on Urban Folklore
Folklore Society of South Indian Languages (FOSSILS) organizes a national seminar on "Urban Folklore" to be held on June 27 and 28, 2008 at Telugu University, Hyderabad. The sub themes of the conference are 1. Urban Folklore_Conceptual Issues, 2. Urban Folklore_Generic issues and cross-generic transformations, 3. Urban Folklore - Issues in Field Methodology, 4. Interpretations of Urban Folklore- Problems and Prospects, 5. Studies on specific genres in Urban Folklore and 6. Definition of Folklore in the context of the inclusion of urban folklore