PI: Josephine Mcdonagh, Department of English
Partner Organization: CNRS, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Jadavpur University
During the Cold War, literature and art were weaponized, and an impressive range of resources channeled to regulate their production and consumption, through censorship and propaganda. This project will explore the role of printed texts in exercising and sustaining a critical culture which emancipated people from the hierarchies, asymmetries and alignments of a colonial / Cold War postcolonial order. It also aims to map the student movements, decolonization struggles, and feminist liberation movements that took place around and after 1968, and ask in what ways print participated in these local and global movements. And third, the project will explore the role of Cold War era print in producing “classic” literary texts. The collaborators will address these questions comparatively by bringing together an international group of scholars of print culture from diverse disciplines, who work on literatures of different regions and in diverse languages, at a two-day conference in Kolkata.
PI: Peter Littlewood, Department of Physics
Partner Organization: Indian Institute of Science Bangalore
The Indian government has identified national needs to develop magnetometers with high sensitivity in atomic systems and Atomic Clocks for precision timing, communications, and navigation. It will also support the development of four Thematic Hubs (T-Hubs) in top academic and National R&D institutes in the domains of Quantum Computing, Quantum Communication, Quantum Sensing & Metrology and Quantum Materials & Devices. The PI proposes to organize a workshop at UChicago’s Delhi center to share recent scientific results. They also aim to explore new collaborative research partnerships and renovate existing ones. They will consider a potential partnership along with India's development of thematic hubs.
PI: Kanwaljeet Singh Bawa Bhalla, Public Health Sciences Graduate Program
Partner Organizations: St Stephens Hospital and IIT Delhi; Swansea University; Member of Parliament, Huddersfield, UK
Road traffic injuries are a leading issue for health and development in India and in most low- and middle- income countries (LMICs). Researchers from the University of Chicago have been working on improving the measurement of injuries, and assisting local governments in developing an evidence-based policy response that is commensurate to the scale of the problem. In September 2024, India will be hosting the 15th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion (Safety 2024). The PI proposes to host two events in Delhi at this conference: (1) A two-day meeting of the International Collaborative Effort (ICE) on Injury Statistics at the UChicago Center in Delhi. (2) A series of three workshops at Safety 2024 focused on the governance of road safety by national and state- level road safety agencies in India, Africa, and Latin America.
PI: Samuel Volchenboum, Department of Pediatrics
Partner Organization: Tata Memorial Centre
The Pediatric Cancer Data Commons (PCDC) is an international network for pediatric cancer data sharing aimed at providing clinicians and researchers with a rich set of data for study. Although there are currently 38 countries with patient data represented in the commons, there is comparatively low representation from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This project aims to expand PCDC influence more widely and work with pediatric cancer researchers across India to bring critically valuable Indian data into the Commons. The collaborators will convene a pediatric cancer data-sharing workshop at the University of Chicago Center in Delhi and use the in-person opportunity to establish the relationships critical to building a vibrant and successful data commons. This in-person event will be followed by virtual collaboration, as the collaborators guide these new collaborators to join international PCDC-affiliate disease consortia and eventually contribute their own data to the PCDC.
PIs: Rajat Thawani, Department of Hematology and Oncology
Partner organizations: University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi; Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals
As the most populated country in the world, the representation India received in clinical trials is low. There are many reasons for this, one of them being limited clinical research staff with the expertise. This project is initiated with the aim to increase the number of trained personnel who can conduct clinical trials at their institutions, and in turn train staff at their sites. The collaborators will train clinical research staff in India by conducting workshops in Delhi and Mumbai with faculty from the University of Chicago, University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi, and Breast Cancer Patients’ Benefit Foundation. Further, the collaborators will select two candidates who would be able to train other staff at their site to come to the University of Chicago to receive in-person training at the Hyde Park campus for four weeks.
UChicago PI: Nancy Kawalek, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
Partner organization: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
The Project will investigate the power of storytelling to promote the adoption of energy-efficient technology by farmers for rural irrigation in India. The Project partners will create stories that explain these technologies in an accessible manner and highlight end- user issues regarding technology adoption. Through activities including interviews with farmers, a workshop to understand the technology usage, a field visit to the rural community, and the development of short immersive videos, the STAGE and Jadav labs will generate awareness in all stakeholders involved in this rural technology adoption.
PI: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Department of History
Abul Mansur Ahmad’s (1898-1979) monumental autobiographical text Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchash Bachar (Fifty Years of Politics that I have Witnessed, 1969) is recognized as a classic text of Bangladeshi nationalism. It is also of critical importance in understanding the two most important events of South Asia in the 20th century—the partition of 1947 and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. The proposed project involves producing an annotated translation with a critical introduction of this monumental 765-page work. Once completed, this work will be widely used by historians of South Asia as well as those interested in Asian nationalisms. The PI and collaborators will further be supported by the University of Chicago Center in New Delhi to research Ahmad’s life, work, and the context in which the book was produced.
PI: Anup Malani, the Law School
Partner Organization: National Insurance VimoSEWA Cooperative Ltd.
There are two costs of accessing health care: the price charged by the provider and the opportunity cost from missing work during treatment and recovery. Health insurance covers the first but not the second. The PI’s study examines the demand for and benefits from a “wage insurance” product to cover the second cost. Specifically, they conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) that varied prices for two wage insurance products for 10,000 households in rural Gujarat. They conducted a baseline in 2022 and will conduct an endline in 2024 to measure adverse selection into wage insurance coverage, moral hazard from wage insurance, and the impact of wage insurance on financial status and health. By hosting an event at the Delhi Centre, they will explain the study’s result to the National Health Agency, which administers India’s national public health insurance plan, the value of adding a wage insurance benefit to the national plan.
PI: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Department of History
Partner Organization: Presidency University, Calcutta
The project aims to explore how factors related to climate change and coastal pollution affect the supply of a Hindu sacred object - the conch shell - and how suppliers (divers, craftsmen) and end-users (household) women accommodate and adapt to these changes, thereby shifting the cultural position of a sacred object in their everyday lives. The PI wishes to carry out fieldwork in order to pursue the following: 1) to interview and talk to local scientific experts on conches and other kinds of Indian Ocean mollusks to see the relationship between scientific views of the crisis in conch supply and the more popular understanding of the crisis on the part of the drivers and craftsmen; and 2) to conduct research on the history of the ban on diving compressors in Tamil Nadu, keeping marine ecologies and rising diver deaths in mind.
PI: Fiona Burlig, Harris School of Public Policy
Partner organization: International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
Subsidies for agricultural insurance programs are widespread, with billions of dollars spent on reducing premiums globally (World Bank 2021). Insurance may enable farmers to take production risks that improve their climate resilience, or crowd out private adaptation measures, as farmers are hedged against climate risk. This project proposes to test the extent to which subsidized insurance crowds in or crowds out climate adaptation with a randomized controlled trial in Telangana, India. The project will randomize 300 villages into a control group and insurance arms, where farmers receive small or large payouts in the event of limited rainfall. The collaborators will elicit farmer willingness to pay (WTP) for (i) drought-resistant seeds and (ii) high-yielding but not resilient seeds, and conduct detailed surveys to estimate the effect of subsidized insurance on WTP for the two seed types, other ex ante decisions, agricultural production and profits, and welfare outcomes.
PI: Rajat Thawani, Department of Hematology and Oncology
Partner organizations: University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi; Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals
As the most populated country in the world, the representation India received in clinical trials is low. There are many reasons for this, one of them being limited clinical research staff with the expertise. This project is initiated with the aim to increase the number of trained personnel who can conduct clinical trials at their institutions, and in turn train staff at their sites. The collaborators will train clinical research staff in India by conducting workshops in Delhi and Mumbai with faculty from the University of Chicago, University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi, and Breast Cancer Patients’ Benefit Foundation. Further, the collaborators will select two candidates who would be able to train other staff at their site to come to the University of Chicago to receive in-person training at the Hyde Park campus for four weeks.
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