Trinity Long Room Hub signs Memorandum of Understanding with Top Indian Research Institute
The Trinity Long Room Hub has renewed its collaboration with a top Indian research institute in an exchange programme for fellows which will last until 2019.
The Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study (JNIAS) is based in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi. The Institute’s Director, Professor GJV Prasad, visited the Trinity Long Room Hub last week, where he and Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, jointly signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
The Trinity Long Room Hub is currently hosting four Visiting Research Fellows from the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study under the SPeCTReSS programme and is also hosting a research fellow from Zakir Husain Delhi College of Delhi University.
Professor Ohlmeyer, who was Visiting Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2015, spoke of the close relationship between Trinity and JNU: ‘We are delighted to have the opportunity to host some of these top scholars from Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study at the Trinity Long Room Hub, continuing the strong existing relationship between JNU and Trinity. Collaborations such as these are fundamental to highlighting the shared histories which continue to reinforce our strong links and build greater understandings of our identities as former colonies.”
In recent months, the Trinity Long Room Hub has been exploring some of the themes of the legacies of colonialism in both Ireland and India, including the histories of partition and armed struggle in both countries. Dr Ashwani Kumar addressed the Trinity Long Room Hub in May 2016 on The Evolution and Challenges of India’s Constitutional Democracy – The Irish Interface. Dr Kumar is a former member of the Upper House (Rajya Sabha) of the Indian Parliament and served as the Union Cabinet Minister for Law and Justice.
In June, a two-day India-Ireland conference took place at the Trinity Long Room Hub where scholars from Irish and Indian academic institutions spoke, from a literary and historical perspective, about the interactions dating back to the late seventeenth century between Ireland, England’s oldest colony, and India, the largest colony. Professor Bodh Prakash, Professor of English at Dehli University, gave the keynote lecture of the conference on the topic Partition and Inter-Community Relations in Irish and Indian Literary Representations.
Director of the JNIAS, Professor GJV Prasad said:
‘This is an extremely important agreement for both Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study and the Trinity Long Room Hub since it reinforces our commitment to the relationship between our two institutes, between Trinity College Dublin and JNU, and between Ireland and India. I hope that the traffic between TLRH and JNIAS will increase in the near future and we will be able to facilitate more joint projects and build on the significant work that we have done together.’
*****************
The Trinity Long Room Hub’s Visiting Research Fellowship Programme is central to the Institute’s mission to amplify the reach of Trinity’s Arts and Humanities research among the most distinguished scholars worldwide. In 2015-16, the Trinity Long Room Hub hosted over 20 leading international scholars to the institute for periods of two weeks or two to three months.
Contact: Aoife King, Communications Officer | Trinity Long Room Hub | aoife.king@tcd.ie | 01 896 3895